


The Lost Protocol

by Winterstar



Series: This is battle; this is war. [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Dom!Tony, Dom/sub, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Impact Play, M/M, Nightmares, Orgasm Control, Orgasm Denial, PTSD, Public Sex, Rimming, Sex Toys, Subdrop, major angst, more to come - Freeform, sub!Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 19:09:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2161842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Oh, babe,” Tony whispers and pulls him in for a kiss. Now, more than ever, he wants to haul Steve upstairs and dedicate every motion, reaction, and caress to him. He’s never been so entitled before, never been so blessed. Yet, Steve requested something different than what Tony needs. One thing he’s learned in their constant exploration of the ways of dominant submissive pairing is that he listens to the needs of his submissive, Steve. What Steve wants and needs is what he gets. Tony finds that his cravings and desires come secondary, and he feels more fulfilled when he succeeds in giving Steve what he needs.</i><br/> </p><p>This story is part of the series <b>This is battle; this is war</b> but it should be noted that you can read this story without reading all of the previous ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story can be read as a stand alone. The only primer you need is that Steve and Tony are in a dom/sub relationship and are still figuring out what that means to both of them. It is somewhat Iron Man 3 and Captain America 2 compliant (with some twists to make it fit the series but nothing you really need to know to read and enjoy the hotness to come). If you have any questions, just leave comment and I will give you more info or even tell you which story in the series you can refer to for more background, but you should be able to read this without much back story at all. Thanks!

He may fall in love with this cabin like he fell in love with Steve, hesitant and wrecked like a broken engine that once attended to warms and purrs beautifully. Steve. He looks out at the lake beyond the stretch of grass to the rear of the cabin. He imagines in the summer time seeing boats and water skiers dotting the water as the sun glints off the gentle ripples. Now as a new layer of snow falls to the ground, covering the grass, wrapping the world around him in silence, Tony allows the tension to leave his shoulders. 

For the first time in nearly a year, he finally feels at home – even in this small cottage in the middle of nowhere, a place he literally bought last week – lock, stock and barrel with a suitcase of money. He insisted during the exchange that he could move in immediately while the settlement papers were completed. Considering the fact he paid in cash, the bank and the seller had no problem with handing over the keys and all of the furniture. 

He needed a place to rest and relax, to get lost from all of what had transpired over the last year. The thought of spending so many months without Steve still hurt even if it was worth it. He’s still pissed about Steve’s insistence and stupidity that he could handle the entire situation at SHIELD on his own. It didn’t turn out quite the way they surmised it might, but the fact of the matter remained – SHIELD had been destroyed and Steve and Tony could finally come back together again. Rekindle their relationship, but Tony wondered if they could after being apart for so long.

Looking at his watch, Tony grimaces and tries not to feel let down. He’d only sent Steve the text this morning about the final arrangements. He’s not even that late, not yet. He scrubs a hand through his hair and sets about unpacking. Either way, with or without Steve he’s going to spend some time here, relaxing trying to piece together what the heck they should do next.

SHIELD is gone.

His suits – well he had one or two left - it isn’t like every single suit he built had been housed in Malibu and answered the call when needed – but the question still remained; is he still Iron Man.

He needs to re-establish his place and redefine himself. The silence will do him good if Steve doesn’t show – or it will drive him completely insane. He could wire up JARVIS. It wouldn’t be hard to order the equipment, might take a bit to get it delivered, but still…he promised himself no props, no cocoons, no binge drinking. Nothing but peace and quiet and Steve. That’s one of the reasons he came here, found a new place, one with no connections to anything else.

“What the hell am I supposed to do if he doesn’t show?” Tony says and, of course, there’s no answer. None. “Well, buddy, I would think you would say.” He turns around while looking at the wood beamed ceiling, imagining JARVIS housed within these walls. “I think you’d say, Master, oh great and powerful one, oh pain in my ass, you will do as you always do, sir. You will survive.”

He frowns, now he’s quoting old songs. “Christ, maybe I need to get busy.” He doesn’t want to fall back to any of his old routines, he wants to be self-sufficient, he wants to be in control of his desires and cravings and wants. Yet, he knows one of the reasons he had been able to exert control over his world had been Steve.

“But I let him go,” Tony says and picks up his Starkphone he’d cast to the table near the entrance of the cabin. He presses the button, and waits. Anxious and needy and he’s a basket case and somehow he hates himself a little more.

“Tony?”

He breathes a sigh of relief. “Pepper.”

“I thought you were getting away for a while, after the whole thing with SHIELD, I thought you and Steve were going to try and reconnect.” Pepper sounds concerned – it is never a good thing to cause Pepper to be concerned. Usually the cavalry is called and that involves Rhodey and all kinds of hassles with the United States military he would like to avoid right now. 

“We are, we are,” Tony says. “I just wanted to tell you I bought a cabin on a lake.”

“Another one?” Pepper says and he hears the slight puff of air from her lips, can almost see the fond roll of her eyes. He knows she’s weighing whether or not to call in reinforcements. “Isn’t Steve coming?”

“No, yes, I don’t know. I texted him.” 

“You texted him? You didn’t call?” Pepper’s admonishment hits right where it is supposed to in the center of his chest where a hole echoes in his lungs and heart. “You two haven’t seen each other in how long and you text him to come and meet you? After everything that happened with SHIELD? After you two decided on that hair brained idea to go your separate ways to find out who was at the core of the corruption at SHIELD, you text him?”

“Well, now that you put it that way it doesn’t sound as great of an idea.” He scans the small cabin, seriously he hasn’t been in a living quarters this small since – well since the cave, probably. Now that brings up all kinds of good thoughts. 

“Tony, call him. He was injured, he needs to know you care,” Pepper says. “You have called him? Talked to him about what happened, haven’t you?”

“No, yes, a bit?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Pepper says. 

“I didn’t know if we were still, you know, pretending to be apart. I talked to some guy named Sam. He said Steve was doing okay, that he was hurt but recovering.” Tony paces back and forth in the living room. “I should have assumed, shouldn’t I? I should have called him, I should have went to see him. Christ, he was shot. Multiple times, Pep, multiple times and his loving boyfriend sat on the sidelines.”

“Wait, hold on before you chase that rabbit down the hole, Tony,” Pepper says. “You know that both of you, all of the team had been in danger due to the infiltration of Hydra at SHIELD. You’d plan this to clear a way for all of you to be free from that risk.”

“But are we free, when are we free?” Tony says. “I didn’t go to see him, Pep. I should have. He nearly died. He fell out of a damned Helicarrier.”

“Seems like he has some sort of death wish.” She states it almost offhandedly like she’s joking, like she doesn’t mean it, but somehow it rings with a truth that almost to tainted to accept. The idea, the thought, the conclusion that Captain America might have a death wish stabs into him harder and fiercer than any weapon. 

“Yeah, hmm,” he stutters for words to reply. He’s still hooked on her revelation. “Did I do this to him?” The words tumble out of his mouth before he’s able to catch them and stuff them away.

“No, Tony, why would you think that?” Pepper says. “Steve loves you. You love him, right? You’ve always taken care of each other.”

It’s hard to argue with her when she doesn’t have half a clue about the nature of their relationship. “You know me, Pep, you know me.” He emphasizes the know and begs her to understand without further explanation.

“I know you care and so does he,” Pepper says and he’s not sure what she means.

“I’m a fuck up, aren’t I? Not when it comes to tech or artificial intelligence or anything brilliant like that, but this, relationships. I’m a fuck up.”

“Tony,” Pepper says and pain laces her voice, the kind of emotional pain people try to avoid. It isn’t good, and no one likes to remember that kind of pain. “Call him, try Tony, you only have yourself to blame if it doesn’t work, but especially if you don’t try.”

He hangs his head and clutches the phone. She understands him so well, but at the same time hasn’t a clue how his relationship with Steve changed him, allowed him to cast off the irresponsible to become the controlled understanding man. All these months away from Steve, he clung to the idea of getting back to it. Maybe it is just another crutch. 

“Can people be crutches?” Tony asks.

“What?”

“Maybe he’s just another crutch, like the suits,” Tony says. “Maybe we, he, maybe it isn’t normal, healthy.”

“Are you both consenting adults?” Pepper says and while her voice sounds slightly exasperated with him, amusement lingers near the periphery. 

“Yes, of course,” Tony says. “Of course.”

“Then call him and find a way to make it healthy for you again,” Pepper says. “And now, I have to go, Tony. Meeting in five minutes. Call me, okay?”

“Okay.”

The silence after she disconnects feels like the void of space – and he should know. He clicks the phone and tosses it back on the table near the door. Wandering into the kitchen he checks to ensure the refrigerator is fully stocked, it is. He’d arranged for it to be stocked and waiting for him when he purchased the place. 

He shouldn’t have bought it. What the hell is he going to do with another cottage on a lake in buttfuck nowhere. He needs a holiday. Maybe he should consider going to Monaco or over to the Islands. He liked spoiling Steve in the Islands, that was fun. He smiles but his expression drops as he climbs the single wooden staircase to the loft bedroom upstairs. It is a beautiful room with a slanted ceiling and a door out to a balcony to view the lake. He likes it even if it is small. 

“Shouldn’t have bought it.” Another stupid, ridiculous purchase. When is he going to learn his lesson? He still has the property in rural Pennsylvania he’s rebuilding into an institute of higher learning. Plus the house by the lake in upstate New York. If he wasn’t stupid rich, he’d be bankrupt by now. 

He marches down the stairs, thumping all the way as if to show his disgust with the rest of the world – if the rest of the world even cared. He’ll call the real estate agent, get the place set up for vacation rentals and get the fuck out of Dodge as soon as it is light out again. 

Snatching up the phone, he scrolls through his contacts and hits the dial button. As the voice on the line picks up the back door opens and Steve steps in with snow glittering in his hair and eyelashes.

“Really coming down hard now,” Steve says and brushes away the flakes. “Big accident right outside of town, I stopped to help.” He drops his luggage and slams the door closed. Smiling he claps his hands together and greets Tony. “Finally.” He opens his arms as if to embrace Tony – who’s completely frozen at the sight, the beautiful sight of Steve in the tiny cabin. “Oh wait!”

He holds up a finger to halt Tony from stepping into the circle of his arms. Tugging off his boots, he places them on the mat, and then toes off his socks to reveal a beaded anklet. Standing up, he smiles and shows the four beads on the leather band wrapped around his bare ankle. “I had to search for it in all my stuff. Packed it away all those months ago when we decided this was the best course of action – to confront SHIELD’s corruption head on. But I found it.” He looks up at Tony. “Now, I’m yours.”

Something releases, breaks free, launches him across the space and he clutches at Steve, nearly knocking him off his feet as he grapples to kiss, to touch, to reunite with his love. He consumes, gives, and pours into the kiss everything he feels and desires and fears. He hopes Steve understands as he presses against him, hands clasped on either side of Steve’s face. 

Eventually he pulls away to suck in some air but as he does he senses a tremor under his grasp as if Steve’s vibrating against him. He guides Steve to the couch past the kitchen and to the small living room. They fall in a tangle of arms and legs; Steve hasn’t even taken off his coat. Tony cannot keep his hands away, he needs to touch and be touched. Without being asked Steve obliges. 

“Whatever you want, Tony, whatever,” Steve says. “I missed this, I missed you.” He searches Tony’s eyes for something, some hidden, but unknown answer. Diving in he kisses like a man deprived of light, seeking its warmth and embrace all at once. 

And yet, Tony cannot see that he deserves this complete offering of soul and heart. He cannot accept it. Steve weighs him down, heavy against him on the couch. Tony cannot help the words, they bubble up, boiling from the inner turmoil and heat and shame.

“I should have come to you, God, I should have been there for you,” Tony says. He treads a path blind and ignorant to its outcome. “Please, damn it, I should have been there.”

Steve lifts his body up, his expression wondering and confused. Balancing on one arm locked near Tony’s head, he positions himself over Tony like a shield, like a shelter. “Tony?”

The shadow of Steve covers him as much as his body and in the darkness he summons courage to confront what has been lurking deep and dark throughout their time apart. “I left you to them and I did nothing.”

Steve stumbles backward, his face twisted in thought. “I’m not sure what you mean. We decided that we could sit by and just watch as whomever had infiltrated SHIELD took everyone we knew down.”

“But you went back, alone, without me.” Tony shuffles up on the couch. “I could have insinuated myself back with SHIELD.”

“It wouldn’t have worked we left them high and dry and said we were together and they were on their own.” Steve threads a hand through his hair; it’s much shorter than Tony remembers. “If we’d come back, then they would never had believed the cover we used.”

“That you and I-.”

“Weren’t anymore.” Steve nods and reaches out to grasps Tony’s hand. “Let’s not do this right now.”

“After, I should have been there, after,” Tony says and sits up. Steve’s legs are stretched out before him on the couch and he glimpses the anklet. Touching it, he fingers each of the beads. “You almost died.”

“You couldn’t come, if some of them survived – it would have given everything away. I’m all right now, I’m good.”

Tony doesn’t let go of the beads, only looks up and says, “No you’re not, I can tell.”

“Are either of us?” Steve says and he covers Tony’s hand with his own. “You remember what four beads means, right?”

Tony only nods as he taps each of the colorful beads in succession. They ventured down a path in their relationship, a path where their dominant and submissive play brought them to a precipice that neither of them new how to navigate. They’d failed miserably, but somehow found a way back into one another’s arms. Neither of them had been an expert in the world of hard play or dominant and submissive roles. They learned to communicate better and devised a simple yet elegant method to set limits on their interaction. 

The anklet is that system; Steve asked for nothing fancy or overly technical. Not because he couldn’t handle the technology – the sassy bastard knows more than he lets on – but because being in a headspace for play means throwing out all other complex thought processes and being focused on the play only. The beads tell a story and set restrictions. One bead is nice and easy, two brings means a slightly rougher play, while three is intensive and harder. Four – four is a dream they’d only just begun to explore when they realized they could not abandon their roles as Avengers.

The fact that Steve walked through the door with four beads on his anklet stops the breath in Tony’s lungs, narrows the world to only Steve. They had promised to always be careful and truthful with one another especially regarding the nature of their relationship.

He bows his head and says, “I’m not sure I’m ready for it.”

“Oh,” Steve replies and Tony feels a cold draft in the room. 

“It isn’t like what you think, I just need a little time,” Tony says and grabs both of Steve’s hands. “We have to figure out together what this fourth bead means. I need some time, and hey it’s not like this little cabin I bought has much in it. I haven’t had a chance to rig anything up, you know.” He’s going for whimsical but he thinks he’s coming off as awkward and unsure – which isn’t far from the truth.

“Can I make a suggestion?” Steve says and brushes a thumb over the inner part of Tony’s wrist.

“If you want?” 

“We have a few weeks here, right? That’s what you texted me,” Steve says and his eyes are bright and fired as if heated by a fever.

“Yeah, I figure we have to get the team working together to clean up that little mess you happened upon near the Potomac.” Tony shrugs, he knows responsibilities aren’t too far around the corner. 

“Then let’s try, I know we haven’t seen one another or even talked to one another in a long time,” Steve says. “So we can start out simple. How about you make all the decisions on food, you know, just everything.”

“Like a menu?” This is weird. He knows Steve needs to eat a LOT but this is a strange request. It isn’t a horrible kink, and he can handle it, but food? 

“Not only a menu, but you control what and when and how we eat. Everything, I won’t eat if you don’t plan it.”

Tony scrunches up his face and studies Steve. He’s being completely serious about this plan. 

Steve pats Tony’s hand. “Think of it as a way to provide the care that you were unable to give me after.” He pauses and turns his face so that Tony cannot get a clear view of his eyes. “After Washington.”

He tests the waters. “Okay?”

Steve inhales, holds it, and then says, “Okay then. Where can I put my stuff?” His expression fails to move toward neutral right away and Tony catches the hollows of his eyes as if the whole of the last years has eaten away at his core to leave him nothing but a husk of his former self.

The truth of it, how exposed Steve must have felt confronting his old friend, tearing down the established organization Peggy helped to build baffles Tony, he cannot analyze it quickly enough to offer the correct response. He falls back on their needed play, the beaded anklet that tells him his place and time and reaction and what he should fucking do.

“Upstairs, then,” Tony says and heads toward the staircase. “I’ll show you around. It’s small but nice.” He points to the single bedroom near the foot of the stairs. “That’s equally as small, but it has a bathroom with a large enough tub, I thought we could designate it as our playroom. I spent the last week preparing it, but it’s a surprise.” He starts up the stairs. “And this.” He gestures to the loft and bedroom with its bathroom. “Could be our regular bedroom, plus it has great windows to the lake.”

“Don’t you already have a lake house, Tony?” Steve says and drops the bag near the closet to join Tony near the sliding glass doors to the balcony. The snow has picked up and the flurries mask the view of the lake and the pine trees lining the property.

“Yeah, I do,” Tony says but doesn’t look at Steve. He’s surprised at how much he needs Steve’s approval with respect to this place. “But this, this place it’s just you and me. No outside project like the institute or even JARVIS. Just us.”

Steve remains silent for a good five minutes and it scares Tony, though he’s loathed to admit it. Finally, Steve speaks in a low quiet voice. “For so long I’ve stayed in control, Tony. Just like we planned it. I went in with Natasha and we dig in and planted our roots. Clint went after other cells, and Natasha and me – we went after the big dogs. I never expected to find my past at the center of everything.”

Tony steps closer, his hand on Steve’s shoulder. There’s a rage and a terror and a desolate place devouring all that is Steve. 

“We thought it would be simple, but it’s not.” Steve faces him. What Tony sees ruins him because he cannot bare to think about someone he loves being so completely bankrupt of hope. 

“No, it never is,” Tony says and knows it isn’t enough.


	2. Chapter 2

How does he help someone who’s had his life shredded? He understands a little bit of the reasons why Steve asked him to care for him. “You might live to regret having me take care of the food thing, you know.”

Steve furrows his brows; the transition makes no sense to him. 

“Come, let me take care of you,” Tony says and kisses the side of Steve’s neck near his ear.

Steve only hums a little and falls into Tony’s embrace. He nuzzles at Tony’s throat and sighs as he kisses and licks along the sensitive skin. Yet, Tony halts his actions, stepping out of the circle of arms and says, “We’ll have a snack first, okay?” He doesn’t know why but his heart’s decided to skip and leap about in his chest.

Frowning, Steve stutters for a reply, rights himself, and says, “Sure? Where can I clean up?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tony says and leads Steve to the suite’s bathroom. “Tiny, bathroom is tiny.” He opens the door. “That’s why downstairs will be better for, you know, the aftercare stuff.” It’s hard to force the words out like he’s speaking with broken teeth in his mouth. “Go ahead and shower, do whatever. I’ll be downstairs making something to eat.”

Steve snickers at him as he exits; Tony can only shake his head. “Ye have little faith.” But he’s not wrong, Tony isn’t known for his skills at culinary arts.

He escapes and rushes down the stairs before Steve can question him. He finds his way past the playroom to the living room and then enters the large country kitchen. He’s not a cook but he knows that Steve will be happy with just about anything. That doesn’t mean he’s going to make the mistake of trying his hand at omelets again. 

He had the place stocked, so he should have everything he needs – he paid enough for it. He finds some steaks in the refrigerator and some salad makings. He should be able to handle that. He retrieves his StarkPad and scrolls through the tablet to figure out how exactly he should go about cooking and preparing everything. He finds a marinade recipe for the steaks that’s simple and fast. He can follow directions, if he wants to. He chops up some cucumbers and tomatoes, rinsing as he goes. As he finishes up the salad, he finds a certain serenity in the chore and the tension that built over the last hour relaxes from his frame. He smiles. 

It will take a few hours for the steaks to marinate so he turns to a quick snack for Steve. He could go with chocolate milk and Cheetos to remind Steve of their first outing at the other lakehouse, but he sets that aside for another time. He preps the wine and then pulls out the cheese and crackers. Getting a plate from the cupboard, he places a row of crackers on it, then some slices of cheese and dollops some mustard in the center. He checks out his handiwork and says, “Well, it’s not bad.”

“It’s perfect.”

Tony whips around to find Steve watching him from the alcove to the kitchen. He only wears a pair of low slung sweats and nothing else, not even a tank t-shirt. It’s not exactly summer out and Tony immediately wishes he’d built a fire in the stone hearth near the picture window at the back of the house. 

Admiring Steve, his erect nipples and broad chest, Tony says, “I’d say.”

Steve smiles and only a tinge of red comes to his cheeks. “I’ve missed this, missed connecting to you.”

“Me too, Babe,” Tony says. He finds a little courage which is surprisingly hard to muster, and says, “We didn’t get to explore the fourth bead too much before we set about cleaning house with SHIELD.”

“No, no we didn’t,” Steve says and drops his gaze. It isn’t as if he’s embarrassed or ashamed of the idea of the fourth bead in their relationship, but he’s playing into it, working the idea of submission into their little retreat both in and outside the bedroom. 

The idea, the action itself turns over in Tony hotly, and he swallows against the thrill of having someone like Captain America at his feet. He suddenly wants it, and all of his hesitation melts under the heat. He knows it isn’t gone but faded for now. Because this seems so right and perfect.

“Perfect,” he says again and walks over and into Steve’s space. He glides his fingertips over Steve’s skin, feeling as the flesh goosepimples under this ministrations. Teasing, he plays and places feather light caresses on nipples and watches as Steve lids his eyes to drift into the feel of it. It has been so long, Tony thinks they are both lost and grappling for purchase. In a quiet voice he commands, “Go to the fireplace, kneel on the floor, I’ll be right there.”

Steve nods, intakes breath, and then turns to leave. Tony notices a small hitch in his gait. “Steve?”

“Just wanted to be ready for you,” Steve says but keeps his eyes averted as he turns back. 

A low burn of want tightens in his groin as he realizes Steve’s prepared himself with a plug. He bites back the groan of desire and waves Steve away. He wants this to go slow. It’s more about missing and love and reconnection than anything else right now. But at the same time, he truly missed being able to have Steve to balance his brain and body. 

He uncorks a bottle and pours some wine. While he knows what he wants, he must discover what Steve needs. The thought of what Steve’s been through, what Steve’s allowed to happen, and the words Pepper said resound in Tony’s head. Knowing that Steve had been willing to die for Bucky, his friend and one time lover scares Tony. This might be all they have, Steve might have come here to say goodbye to Tony in the end. It petrifies Tony. 

Setting the wine and the plate of cheeses on a tray, he carries it to the stone fireplace where Steve, kneels next to the recliner, his hands resting open on his thighs. 

Tony steadies himself and then puts the tray on the table between the two recliners facing the fireplace. “I think a fire is in order.”

Steve moves as if he’s planning on building it, but Tony wraps a hand in his short hair and gently guides him away. Steve gives a little moan, and leans into Tony’s presence, as if the very weigh of his body causes Steve to gravitate towards him. “I’ll do it, you just sit. I’m checking you over in a minute.” 

Steve knows not to protest, not because of their roles but because he understands what Tony needs. He sits quietly but does assist with handing Tony the wood, going to get the matches and the starter sticks. 

“Be easier with a nice shot from my gauntlets, but let’s do it the old fashioned way,” he says with a wink. Steve settles back down again and waits as the fire roars to life.

When Tony completes his task, he turns back to Steve and pets a hand through the hair he’d tugged. “How I missed you.” He drifts his touch down to Steve’s shoulders, his chest, his abdomen. He knows from reports and from Sam Wilson that Steve had been shot numerous times and stabbed a few times as well. There are no scars, no visible ones but even as his caress glides along Steve’s bare chest, Tony feels what cannot be seen.

Every hollow and broken space is superficially covered by the perfection of flesh, the gleam of health. When Tony is hurt the marks are clear and glaring, but Steve’s body hides it, Steve conceals everything. Taking his time, Tony examines each inch of flesh, how muscles and tendons twitch under his care, how shivers rise across the fragility of skin. 

“Babe,” Tony says in a rasped whisper. He feels like a starving man at a feast, like a marathon runner come to the end of the race. It is victory and nourishment. Everything he touches and wants under his fingertips.

He shifts into a seat on the chair and looks down at Steve. “You’re right. I’m going to take care of you, now.” He watches as Steve eases into a dreamy state, his eyes dilate, his mouth falls slightly open. It’s been so long, even with Steve in front of him, he aches for him. “It’s just the two of us, no interference at all. I’m going to do this for you.” He keeps his hands on Steve at all times, in order to provide the comfort he can feel Steve yearning for even without a word spoken. 

“From now on, I’m providing everything for you. Unless I say specifically you’re to not do anything.”

Steve opens his mouth, maybe to object, but Tony slides his thumb inside. “Suck.”

As commanded, Steve wraps his lips around Tony’s thumb and his tongue suckles at his finger pad until Tony feels all the blood in his brain travel south. He slips his thumb out and says, “Eat first.” 

Picking up a cracker and then some cheese he feeds it to Steve, one at a time. He’s careful and silent as he attends to the task and it reminds him of the Japanese tea ceremony. It is a task set about to bring a sense of inner calm and awareness. He feels the same as he cares and feeds Steve. He remembers when he bound Steve in the manner of the Japanese art of Kinbaku, how it relieved both of their needs. He’ll have to think of doing that again, methodically binding and tying Steve brings a certain centered serenity to Tony.

“I brought the jute, the rope, I’d like to bind you again,” Tony says. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yellow,” Steve says and it surprises Tony, because Steve enjoyed the long moments of being physically held in wrappings designed by Tony.

“Okay, not right away then.” He cannot push, but he’ll find out why. He pops another square of cheese into Steve’s mouth and waits until he’s swallowed before he offers the wine. “Can you talk about it, now?”

Steve sips the wine but sets it aside. “Tony, is it okay I’d like not to? I’m not prepared to discuss it right now, not in this setting?”

“You mean, not here or-?” Tony runs fingers through Steve’s short hair, only tugging it lightly, playfully.

“No, we can talk about it here, eventually. But not now,” Steve says and reaches up to guide Tony’s hand down to his groin. He presses Tony’s palm against the firm shaft of his cock. “Not here, not now.”

Tony chokes back his response, and grabs for Steve with his other hand. He delves in like he would any question or problem; he works and teases and pries until he’s satisfied when he’s trying to solve something, bring a solution to light. Steve has been his question, his query all along from when he was only just adjusting to this new world, to the threat of Hydra, and now in this nebulous place they’ve fallen into, the rabbit hole, the wonderland of after – after SHIELD, after Bucky – after. 

Steve drags away from Tony, but keeps his one hand clasped over Tony’s on his lap. “I don’t want to come tonight, if that’s okay.”

He cannot fathom why Steve would think he hasn’t earned the right to come, but for now, Tony allows it. He has to respect Steve’s feelings. They will need to investigate this need sooner rather than later. It isn’t the first time Tony’s been in control of Steve’s orgasm, but it is the first time Steve has refused the thought of climax as a whole. He wants to control Steve’s orgasm, in new ways, but this was not in his plans.

“Do you want me to come?” Tony says and listens as the fire cracks in the background.

“Yes, do what you need to do,” Steve says, and squeezes the hand in his lap. He feels the shudder through Steve as Tony tightens his grip. Through the quaking, Steve asks, “Can we, can we engage in some impact play, can you do that?” 

He’s not sure, not at all. The new guy, Sam Wilson, informed Tony of the state Steve had been in when the helicopter found him on the banks of the Potomac. Not only shot and stabbed but also beaten. Yet, Steve must be asking for a reason. Tony recognizes that Steve is testing, trying to find out what Tony can tolerate after so many months apart. A relationship and a play like they’ve had isn’t an easy thing to jump back into without some preparation. “I think I can, but not too much, easy, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says though he’s visibly disappointed.

“It’ll come,” Tony promises, strokes his hand down the length of Steve’s face. He needs to work up to it. “I want to make sure I don’t fuck anything up.”

“I don’t think you will, but I’m afraid I might.”

This startles Tony. “What?”

Steve shakes his head and there’s a sorrow, powerful and prominent written in his expression. “Just please, Tony, I’m asking you. If you need me to beg-.”

“No, God, no I would never ask you to beg, not like that,” Tony says and curls his arm around Steve’s neck to draw him closer.

Tony grasps Steve’s erection. He squeezes it and Steve hunches over but doesn’t use his hands to stop Tony. He only flares his nostrils and exhales.

“It’ll be rough enough, okay?” Tony says and Steve leans against his knee slowly breathing as he closes his eyes. Tony strokes his fingers through his hair, light and loving. He would like to bring Steve upstairs and make a slow and easy kind of love to him, but he also respects what Steve is asking – that he needs more, he needs to know he can trust someone implicitly, that he can trust Tony.

Resolved, Tony clenches his fist in the tangle of Steve’s hair and is rewarded with a gasp of breath and Steve’s hands on each of Tony’s shins. He’s honest and open with Steve. “I wanted to bring you upstairs, to show you how much I’ve missed you, how much it hurt to have you in danger’s way for so many months while I sat back and pretended not to care.”

“Tony, I-.”

“Shh, Babe, not yet.” Tony whispers a hand down Steve’s back, finding no signs of the hurts that came to him when he encountered his long lost friend. “But tonight, I am going to give you what you need, however you need it. Do not come. Do you understand? You are not allowed to come. If you come, there will be consequences.”

“Punishments?”

Again, Tony is stunned, but he holds back his surprise. Steve’s never truly asked to be punished, but they had practically no time to really explore the fourth bead. Tentative, Tony says, “Yes.”

Steve measures his breathing but also bends further into Tony’s touch. They’ve been separated and out of sync for so long, Steve’s molding to Tony’s will shoots a buzz of need so powerful to his groin, he hisses in response. 

“Color?”

“Green, all green,” Steve says and he peers up at Tony – something fleeting and reckless crosses his features but disappears as quickly as it came. 

“Drop your sweats,” Tony says. Steve stands and shuffles off the sweats, revealing that he has no underwear on. His cock glistens with pre-come and Tony notes he didn’t put on cockring or ball cage. “Do you need anything to stop you from coming?”

“I’d like to try without,” Steve says.

Tony raises an eyebrow; Steve may have a difficult time, especially since they’ve not played in many months. “When’s the last time you came?”

Steve averts his gaze, but Tony tugs his hand and drags him back to his knees. He rotates Steve’s chin with a simple finger to his jaw. “When?”

Eyes downward, Steve says, “When we were together.”

Tony jerks and blinks. “What? You never-.”

“No.”

“Shit, why the hell not?”

“I gave my orgasms to you, Tony, the moment I put on the fourth bead.” His earnest look shakes Tony’s very core.

“But the fourth bead is only when we’re alone together,” Tony says.

“I wanted to show you my devotion to it; I wanted you to know it wasn’t, isn’t just about some play scene that we do.” Steve licks his lips and shudders. It isn’t one of the full body rolls he does when he’s fully into a scene or deeply turned on. But Tony can tell he’s terrified to reveal this intimate fact.

“Oh, babe,” Tony whispers and pulls him in for a kiss. Now, more than ever, he wants to haul Steve upstairs and dedicate every motion, reaction, and caress to him. He’s never been so entitled before, never been so blessed. Yet, Steve requested something different than what Tony needs. One thing he’s learned in their constant exploration of the ways of dominant submissive pairing is that he listens to the needs of his submissive, Steve. What Steve wants and needs is what he gets. Tony finds that his cravings and desires come secondary, and he feels more fulfilled when he succeeds in giving Steve what he needs.

“Please, Tony,” Steve is saying as they break from their kiss. “Please.”

Tony cradles Steve face in his hands and searches his eyes, his unspoken fears. He thinks about the playroom, how he spent the last week setting it up, having his special tech delivered, but doesn’t feel positive it’s the right time to bring it out, to showcase it. Everything is to frail, delicate right now.

“Okay, babe, okay. I’m going to lay you out and do you in tonight.” He pulls Steve to his feet and then gestures for him to lay down on the recliner.

They exchange places and Steve stretches his hands above his head. All of their toys are in the playroom, Tony slips away for a moment to retrieve some of their supplies. He turns on the light, sees the specialized chair in the room and thinks about what he has stowed in the closet. His nerves sing out in concert with his pulsing dick. Not yet, not now, Steve’s too fragile for this introduction. So Tony digs out the lube and a small soft leather whip. It’s more like suede and fine to touch. Stripping, he rejoins Steve near the little cove at the fireplace. 

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to make it easier not to come?”

Steve only nods, there’s a moment of rebellion, defiance in his expression before the fire dies down to a low flame.

To have this much strength and power laid bare before him humbles him – and maybe that is a little bit of what Tony Stark needs.

Tony bites back the coil of want as it tightens in his belly and he feels a clench of his balls. He looks away to settle himself; seeing Captain – his Captain –before him at his mercy and trusting him to take control of everything burns bright and hot. He handles the whip, thinking of his fears, of what’s happened, how they never predicted the outcome. He can taste the fear of losing Steve. It’s been pent up too long, and his need rides high. Clenching the handle of the whip he inhales and braces himself.

He lashes out and strikes Steve’s cock. The whip is softer than a slap of the hand but Steve squeezes his legs together and grits his teeth in response. His cock stays hard and straight. Tony waits to see what Steve will do, and he relaxes, eyeing Tony and waiting for the next blow. When he slashes, Tony hits him twice and Steve arches into it, getting the rhythm and wanting more. 

“Do you need anything?”

“More, just more,” Steve says and drops his enormous muscular legs to the side of the chair, fully presenting himself for Tony to target. His cock is red and purple and seeping with precome. 

Tony finds the air around them thick and the heat of the fire irritating; he’s sweating rivets down his back and his temples run wet. His hands are shaking and his dick is impossibly firm and hot. He doesn’t want to hit Steve, but wants him in his arms. He tries for one more arc of the whip and it cuts the air to impact hard across Steve leaving a stripe of red across his lower belly and causing his cock to throb. Steve grunts and fists his hands as he holds onto the back of the recliner.

Tears leak out of his eyes and Tony drops the whip and covers him. “What, Babe, what?”

“Please, in me, please,” Steve says.

Tony slams the footrest down on the recliner to give him access, and then he pushes Steve’s legs to bend at the knee and hip, planting each foot on the edge of the seat. He spots the little knob of the dildo sticking out of Steve. Slicking up his dick, he slides the dildo out of Steve and then says, “Babe, you okay?”

“Green,” Steve says and opens his eyes. His desperate look drives Tony forward and he plunges in more for Steve’s sake then his own need. As soon as he breaches him Steve breathes out, a powerful sigh. Tony feels the shiver as he relaxes into the feel of Tony in him, deep and wide, dividing and opening, and spreading him, filling him. Lifting Steve’s legs over his shoulders, Tony balances with his knees pressed against the front of the chair. 

Steve murmurs words over and again as Tony pulls out centimeter by centimeter, but then shoves back in fast and wet. The heat encompassing him causes his brain to spin and he clamps onto Steve’s legs to steady them. Even after the dildo, Steve’s still tight, constricting, but inviting all the same.

He cannot stop himself, he knows Steve wants it harsh and unforgiving but Tony needs to touch, he needs the connection. Bending forward, he takes Steve’s mouth and explores the kiss. Steve’s wrapped up, his body curved and quaking as they kiss. Even as Tony thrusts and crushes Steve, the taste and warmth of Steve’s mouth sets him into a fervor. He wants this mouth, he needs this mouth. A slice of ecstasy as he begins to pound into Steve. 

Steve grips his shoulders, clawing at Tony but urging him on all the same. Steve sets the rhythm begging for more as their lips part. With each burst, each impact, every thrust, Tony knows, understands he wants to deprive himself as well. He won’t come in Steve, until he feels worthy of it, until Steve tells him. He strokes again, pressing his hands against Steve’s chest, pinching his nipples with the edge of his nails.

Before he’s ready, Tony pulls out and elicits a moan of disapproval from Steve. He wants to mark Steve, he wants the whole world to know that Steve’s his and his alone. Not SHIELD’s, not Hydra’s, and surely not Bucky’s.

The fear of losing Steve to his old friend seizes him so profoundly, he reaches out and clamps his hand in Steve’s hair to drag him to his knees in front of Tony. Snatching a napkin from the tray, Tony wipes the head of his dick, smears the lube up from the base and then, with one hand in Steve’s hair and the other grasped around his dick he jerks himself off. 

“Keep your mouth closed,” Tony says and works his dick and it’s hard and tense and furious until he’s coming over his hand and spurting across Steve’s cheeks, his eyes, and down his chin. Steve cries out and, without a hand on him, comes as soon as the warm semen splatters against his face. 

He wavers as he finishes, nearly toppling into Tony. Luckily, Tony has enough sanity left to fall to his knees and brace Steve. That is when he realizes Steve is crying. Steve collapses against him, head in the crook of Tony’s neck and weeps. He doesn’t know if Steve’s overwhelmed, overwrought, or in pain. All he knows is the spears of low sobbing continue well beyond anything Tony understands. He cups his hands along the back of Steve’s head, holding him nestled safely, offering what little comfort he can. He quiets him and shushing him, then slowly almost imperceptibly rocks him. 

“Babe, Babe,” Tony says after long minutes and Steve subsides.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Steve says and Tony cannot pinpoint what Steve might be apologizing for, maybe for nearly dying on the Helicarrier, maybe for the long and lonely nights they both had to endure over the months of their plan to takedown the bad infiltrating SHIELD. 

“What, Babe? What?” Tony kisses him tenderly along his temple and chin.

“I’m sorry, I could have stopped but I didn’t want to, I wanted to forget everything, and I just did it,” Steve says. 

“Forget? Help a genius out here, I’m not following.”

“I wasn’t going to come, not for a while,” Steve says and his cheeks are red with shame, his eyes lowered. “What kind of sub am-.”

“Jesus Christ, you haven’t come in months, Steve, I think you get one freebie.” Tony looks down at Steve as they separate. He’s hunched over and pitiful. The defiance all but gone, his demeanor broken. He’s never shattered Steve and this scares him more than any attack launched on his house. 

He touches Steve, everyway, trying to knead out the knots, the quavers racking through his body. He connects and links to him so that Steve will understand, get that he’s not alone in this world. “Christ, you need so much more.” For a moment, a spear of cold fear that he might not be able to give Steve what he needs spikes through him like a shot of frigid wind. “Let’s get good shower for now.” He’s determined to show Steve why they fell together, why they are in love, and why they are part of the same mold even if they were born decades apart. 

“I’m still sorry,” Steve mumbles.

“Tell you what, if you want, I’ll punish you,” Tony says.

Steve peers at him, his eyes wide and blackened with pupils. “Yeah?”

“Sure, if you need it” Tony says and smiles, searching Steve’s face, the bliss seen in his eyes. It both excites Tony. He feels the pain release a degree in Steve, a light shudder runs through him but it isn’t from sorrow, despair, or fear – this is honest desire and craving. Tony kisses his temple. “Sure, Babe, sure.”

“How?” He’s eager for Tony to show him, demonstrate how they will be a couple with the fourth bead as part of their definition.

He has to improvise because he isn’t prepared for this turn of events. “Naked. You’re not allowed clothes until you earn them back.”

Steve slumps into him again, lying against his shoulder as Tony strokes up and down his back. The weight, the warmth bring back to Tony the knowledge that while they have been together for over years they’ve actually spent most of it apart. That needs changing as far as he’s concerned, and this little get away from home is a start. 

“Come on, up on your feet,” Tony says and climbs up while he leads Steve to stand. Hands clasped together, Tony leads Steve into the bedroom that will substitute as their play room. He bites away his anxiety, trying not to show how nervous he is to share the room with Steve. Leading him to it, he holds the door knob but before he opens it he says, “If you don’t like it, tell me. I can change anything.”

He opens the door.


	3. Chapter 3

As Tony opens the door he releases a held breath and escorts Steve into the bedroom. Of the rooms in the house, it is one of the largest – though by his standards it is fairly modest in size. There’s only one window, and Tony’s installed dark wooden shades over it. It looks out to the woods and poses no threat for surveillance. A closet to the right of the door holds another secret Tony will have to gauge Steve’s response to the room and their play before he reveals it. 

In the rest of the room, he designed and worked to make it simple, but enticing. “I didn’t want a dungeon or a pain room.”

He watches as Steve visibly swallows and looks at the equipment, the articles, the carefully designed areas for comfort. The bathroom is opposite the closet on the wall facing the door.

“I tried to make it so that you’d feel it was inviting, kind of exciting.”

Steve remains silent and walks through the room. There’s area rugs on part of the floor, but not all of it. It’s one of the details Tony’s not happy with, but he only had a week to prepare and tiling a bedroom isn’t something to do lightly, especially with the equipment he created for said room. 

Drifting over to the main event in the room, Steve touches the lounger chair. Tony produced it; it took him months – the long months Steve had been away – it helped to pass the time. Steve fingers the arm rests that can be splayed outward in a near cruciform display. There are bindings on the arm rest and Steve picks at them, his mouth tight, his expression flat.

Tony hurries to his side and flicks the steel open. “It’s nothing you can’t break. I made sure that any of the bindings you would be able to snap fairly easily. The chair, though, I had to create it out of what I like to call intelligent metal.”

“Intelligent- what?” Steve furrows his brow in confusion – and Tony takes relief in it. At least he doesn’t have that absent look on his face anymore. 

“The metal is impregnated with a computer network, it’s literally a chip, like what’s inside a computer or your phone but way better.” He wants Steve to love this, he wants him to desire it, and he knows this isn’t the best time. Steve broke down and wept on his shoulder not moments ago. “But maybe we can take a look at it after we clean up?”

Steve rests his hand on the bindings, and then up to the soft head rest. The chair is white with blue undertones, blues that remind Tony of his eyes. As he stands still, Steve surveys the room, with its implements to enhance their play, from cushioned stools and knee rests, to spreader bars, and re-enforced hooks from the ceiling, it’s as tasteful as Tony could envision it. There’s a bar with a cabinet in the corner with a small refrigerator, and there’s blankets and cushions thrown everywhere. 

There’s no bed. They won’t sleep here, they will always sleep together upstairs away from the play and in the cradle of each other. 

“What’s in there?” Steve says and like Sleeping Beauty drawn to the spindle, he steps toward the closet. Tony rushes to block him. “Not, right now. We really need to get cleaned up. I don’t think this is the proper time.”

Steve pauses, for an instant there’s a glimpse of the Captain as if he might protest, but then he shies away from it and nods. It throws Tony, Steve always challenges him, matches him. Something desperate is off, and Tony worries it might intrude on everything they’ve tried to build. He draws Steve toward the bathroom, looking over his shoulder at the closet. He’s excited like a child at Christmas to reveal what is in the closet, but Steve’s not in the right frame of mind. Not yet.

Right now, he fills the tub as he throws in some bath salts and oils. All the while, he pets a hand up and down Steve, who responds by resting gently against Tony. He’s not sure Steve understands what his presence does to Tony, how undone he becomes knowing that Steve trusts him so implicitly and openly to follow his lead, to be this for him. 

“Come on in the tub,” Tony says and they both step in and sink into the large double bathtub. It is one of the luxuries of the tiny cottage that it has a tub large enough for the two of them. Tony eases Steve back against the side of the tub, and retrieves the shampoo and conditioner from his bag. “Sorry, haven’t set everything up just yet.”

“It’s okay,” Steve says in a mutter without opening his eyes. “Just need you here.”

Tony finds one thing that helps him relax is to work at something, teases away a problem. When they first ventured upon this relationship it had been about breaking down Steve’s control as well as building up Tony’s ability to remain in control. They presented the perfect yin and yang in the relationship. But now, he’s not sure it’s all about tearing away the façade of Captain America to brush away the dirt and grime of the outside world to find the core of Steve Rogers. It’s something else, something deep and painful and thorny. It’s Bucky and Tony fears it as well as seeks it. 

Steve had once told him that his relationship with Bucky had been more than a childhood friend. While they never discussed the details, it had been plain the first time they’d had sex Steve had not been an innocent when it came to men. The thought of Bucky alive is one thing, the idea that Bucky is a trained assassin is another, and yet, the concept that Bucky could come back into their lives and steal Steve away from him rides high on Tony’s list of ‘things that will never the fuck happen in his lifetime’. 

But Bucky has one thing that Tony does have.

Time.

He broaches the subject softly as he scrubs away at Steve’s hair. “We’ve been together, how long?”

“Hmm?” Steve opens one eye then shuts it again as soap bubbles stream down his face. “This is our third winter, right? Three winters, but not quite three years?”

“But most of that time,” Tony starts but Steve finishes for him.

“We’ve actually been separated by one thing or another.” 

“Yeah, maybe we should stop doing that?” Tony suggests as he pulls the nozzle down to rinse Steve’s hair. He washes away the sweat and semen as he cleans Steve. “We should stop doing that.” He repeats it, more for his own sake than Steve’s – he thinks. He’s not sure.

Steve sits up in the tub, jostling the water. “Yeah, that would be nice. I liked the time we spent on the island. Just you and me.”

“But we decided we couldn’t just -.”

“Leave our responsibilities behind.” Steve shrugs. “I don’t have to be Captain America. You already destroyed most of the suits.”

Tony gulps back his surprise and says, “You’d do that? You’d give up being Captain America to be with me?”

Steve wipes away the water from his eyes after he dunked his head. “Yeah, sure. Once we get everything with Hydra contained, yes. What else am I supposed to do? I can’t be Captain America forever. I don’t think it’s healthy to be at war for my entire life.”

The words _everything with Hydra_ stick in his head. “So, not right away?”

“Well, it isn’t like deciding to go out to have sushi. I’d have to finish up my missions, clean house so to speak.”

“So to speak,” Tony says and he doesn’t want to admit that it hurts, hollows out the hole in his chest until it’s difficult to talk.

“Tony?” Steve says and leans down to catch a glance of his face. “Tony? What’s this? What’s going on?”

He grapples with his insecurities, because that’s what this is. It’s his dragon, following him like a lizard from hell, always burning his confidence. He’s no Saint George, he’ll never slay it. “Nothing, I just want us to have real time. Real time together. I want more than our friends to know we’re together.” He blurts out the rest to divert Steve away from the scent of his anxieties.

“What, like an announcement to the world or something? Hey, everyone we’re playing at being dominant submissive and guess what Cap’s submissive?” Steve says and Tony knows, recognizes he’s joking but he can’t help but feel like it’s a slap in his face. 

He tries to laugh it off, but it sounds off kilter even to him. “Now, wouldn’t that just be a great surprise to everyone. Nah, Cap, I’m thinking something like dating?”

“Dating?” Steve says and his face contorts only for a few seconds and then it’s gone. “Well, yeah, I suppose.” He cups his hands and washes the water over his face. “I’m hungry? Are you hungry?” He stands and gets out of the tub. The beaded anklet drips with bubbles. 

Tony clears out his mind, tells himself not to be an idiot. This is Steve, they love one another; they’ve spoken it. For Christ’s sake, Steve’s wearing a damned beaded anklet that lays at Tony’s feet all of his freewill. It should be enough.

He wonders why it isn’t.

“Tony?” Steve asks as he towels off.

“Hmm, nothing just figuring out what our first real date should be,” Tony says as he stands up. 

“We have had dates, Tony. We’ve been to dinners and nice restaurants,” Steve says and he continues to dry off. 

Tony grabs a towel before Steve can hand him one. “I guess we have.”

“Of course we have. You bought a whole restaurant once for one of our more memorable dates,” Steve says and knocks Tony with an elbow. He looks down at himself and then out of the bathroom door. “I feel kind of silly walking around naked.”

“Did you bring a robe?”

“No, I don’t think I own one,” Steve says. “It’s okay, I just have to get used to it.” His pale skin flushes red and it’s brilliant and beautiful enough to erase all of Tony’s doubts. 

Popping up on his tiptoes, Tony pecks Steve on the cheek and says, “No matter. I like you this way.” He skims a hand across Steve’s groin and then the other along the rise of Steve’s ass. “Hmm, yes, I think I do like you this way.”

Something about the tender expression Steve offers him quells any residual misgivings and Tony slaps him once on the ass before exiting to get dressed. “Gotta go get dressed. Have to try my hand at steaks for dinner.”

“Do you want me to do anything?” Steve calls up after him as he climbs the stairs to their real bedroom.

He considers it, but then shifts away from the idea. He wants to show Steve that he can do what he requested. “Nope, just relax by the fire. Oh and don’t burn your pretty ass.”

He hears Steve snort and then Tony sighs. He did the right thing, found a little out of the way place, without any of his crutches or connections to either of their lives. This will definitely help them to focus on their relationship, only. Something that has been sadly lacking for years.

He dresses quickly, slipping on a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. He doesn’t want Steve exploring the play room, not that he could actually access what’s in the closet, but still he doesn’t want questions until he’s ready. As he heads downstairs, he sees the Steve hasn’t exactly obey orders. He’s tidied up, gathered up their clothes, and disappeared. 

“Steve?”

“Throwing in a load of laundry, do you have any detergent?” Steve calls from the tiny nook next to the kitchen with the washer and dryer. 

“Shit, no,” Tony says. “We’ll go into town later this week and pick some up.”

Steve joins Tony in the kitchen. “Am I allowed to get dressed for our little outing?” 

“You know for a sub, you’re awful sassy?”

“Depends on your definition, doesn’t it?” Steve says while Tony pulls out the salad. 

“Why don’t you go and sit by the fire while I get us something to eat?”

Steve follows his direction this time and leaves Tony to the task of preparing their meal. He’s not a stranger to the kitchen, but he’s no expert. He pulls out his StarkPad determined not to call on JARVIS or any other help that he could get with access to the internet. The WiFi, the electricity, everything has been switch over to his name so at least he has these modern conveniences. What he does for that man, he smiles. 

Finished, he sets the table with instructions from the internet again. As he places a plate on the table, a thought hits him and he wonders if Steve will comply. He hurries to complete his task and then goes to the living room and finds Steve settled near the fireplace but staring absently at the snow through the picture window.

“Dinner’s ready,” Tony says almost reluctant to break Steve’s solitude. 

For only a split second as Steve turns to him, he reveals an open, exposed appearance and it jars Tony. He physically has to stop himself from jerking at the vulnerability on Captain America’s face. In a blink of an eye the emotion disappears as Steve hides it, buries it deep within the snows of winter. He cringes at the thought.

“Great, I’m starved,” Steve says and follows Tony into the kitchen. He doesn’t seem to show any discomfort in his nudity.

Tony checks in with him anyhow. “How are we doing?” He looks Steve up and down to make it obvious what the subject is.

Steve glances down at himself, and shrugs. “I’m good, green.”

“Well, not green. I’d say a nice pale hue, with ruddy undertones.” 

“Yes, very funny,” Steve says and stops when he sees that Tony has only set one plate on the table.

“Um, Tony?”

Clasping his hands together in an effort to conceal his nerves, Tony says, “Since you requested I feed you, I decided to take that literally.”

Steve opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens it again. Tony steps up and, with a single finger, lifts his chin to shut his mouth. “Don’t need that hanging open with nothing for you to suck and all. So, what will it be? Are we still green?”

Nodding, Steve holds his hands at his sides in fists and steps close to the table, but does not take a seat. He shifts his head, bowing it and looking to the side. “Do you mind if I, if I kneel?”

It’s Tony who’s so taken back this time that he leaves his mouth agape with surprise. He rights his brain and says, “Okay, if you want to?”

Steve looks back at him, intent and serious, then says, “I want.”

Situating himself at the table, Tony sits in the high backed wooden chair. He pulls it out enough so that Steve is able to kneel next to his chair but not have the table obstruct his access to Tony. 

“Is this good?”

Steve says, “Green, very much green.” He lays a hand on Tony’s knee and sits back. Tony can plainly see that Steve’s aroused by his position. Tony strokes a hand along Steve’s shoulder, and says, “I missed you.”

“Me too,” Steve says and for all the worries and reservations Tony’s had over the last months, this moment rings true. 

Tony bends down and presses soft, dry lips against his mouth. He’s pliant and yielding, easily opening his mouth and offering as Tony pursues. It isn’t a hot and needy kiss but something more present, more permanent than passion. When Tony separates from Steve, he cups a hand to Steve’s cheek and lightly kisses lips, then eyes. 

“I love you,” Tony says and he means it and wants it to be more than just this moment, or these moments of play. They are so much more than this, and he hopes that Steve understands it.

“I love you, too.” Steve searches Tony’s expression as if he knows Tony’s fumbling, faltering in his path, their pathway to their relationship. 

Pulling back, Tony says, “Eat, we need to eat.” He focuses again not on the persistent doubts clouding his senses and his mind, instead he moves to the meal. He cuts the steak and takes a bite. Steve doesn’t move, doesn’t protest, he only cradles his head in Tony’s lap waiting. 

After Tony finishes off a few forkfuls, he picks up a slice of the meat with his fingers and offers it to Steve, who regards it for a handful of seconds before opening his mouth, trusting and hungry like a bird. In silence, Tony feeds Steve little by little, measuring how much he’s eating, watching how the act of being fed strings Steve out, how it causes him to harden and fight back shudders of desire.

The salad presents more of a problem, but he uses a folk and with a hand cupped under it, brings it to Steve’s mouth. He’s fed Steve on many occasion, but these moments are quiet, unhurried, almost serene as they move in concert. Steve doesn’t ask questions, just chews and follows Tony’s movements. His expression is open and offering.

By the time they finish it’s later than Tony intended. Steve’s fully erect and a thin sheen of sweat covers his chest. Tony drags a finger along his clavicle and then down his arm. “I want to make love to you later tonight, take time, and I understand you don’t want to come.”

“Like I said Tony I’m giving that over to you, you need to decide. I’ve expressed what I would like to do, but if you say otherwise, I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” Steve says and his honesty hurts. It stings as if someone ran sandpaper over his nerves. 

Tony hates crossroads and decisions like this; he’s already promised and directed Steve that he will not come tonight, but at the same time he’s desperate to demonstrate to Steve that they are more than the sum of their parts, their roles as dominant and submissive. 

He draws a different conclusion that will allow him more time to figure it out in his head. “Tomorrow, then.”

Steve seems perplexed by Tony’s sudden change of heart but says nothing. Instead, he stands and begins to gather up the dishes. “Since you cooked, I’ll clean.”

Steve’s still half erect, but isn’t bothered by it. Tony lounges back in his chair and watches as Steve cleans up the table, the small portable grill, and the rest of the kitchen. After he finishes, Tony leads him back to the great room near the fireplace. Instead of settling into the chair next to Tony, Steve chooses to kneel next to Tony’s chair with his head perched on Tony’s lap, again.

“What is it, Babe?” Tony asks, because even in their most intense play, Steve never acted this dependent, this submissive.

“You call me babe,” Steve says and his voice has a husky rasp to it. “I’d like to have a pet name for you.”

“What like,” Tony says with a cringe. “Master or sir or something?”

“Good lord, no, master, we’re not there. And sir, seems too military for me,” Steve says and rotates his shoulders as if he’s trying to get comfortable.

“Feeling tight?” Tony says. “Turn around I’ll massage the knot out.”

Steve does as told. “I’ve thought about it, but nothing appropriate comes to mind.”

“Handsome, genius, brilliant love of my life,” Tony says. “These all seem appropriate to me.” He works his fingers into the arch of Steve’s shoulders. He’s never seen anyone with such large muscles of the back. 

“Be serious, I want to be able to use something special,” Steve says. “You always use special things for me, how do you come up with them?”

Tony shrugs. “It just comes to me, I don’t know. It’s kind of natural. Give it a whirl, sweetums.”

Steve doesn’t immediately respond, instead he stares into the fire as it burns in the hearth. It’s low and probably needs another log. “Nope, not gonna work.”

“You need to relax, that’s why. Everything’s all pent up, I can feel it.” As he works his fingers into the muscles along the ridge of Steve’s back, Tony says, “Can you tell me why you’re put off by binding now?” At one time, during their stay at the Islands, Steve had cherished long hours of being roped and bound by Tony.

Steve stiffens and moves slightly away from Tony. “I’m not ready.”

“Okay,” Tony says and knows he’s gone too far. He should leave it for now, and he will, but any problem, any puzzle is too much of a temptation to let lie unsolved. He’ll feel Steve out later, maybe give it a day or two. Right now, he’s going to focus on the fact that even after playing a bit, he’s still wound tight.

“Let’s go upstairs.”

Steve looks back at him, and then out the window. It’s not daylight anymore, but the night hasn’t taken hold yet. The swirl of snow plays with what light the rising moon can throw at the Earth through the thick patches of clouds. 

“It’s not night,” Steve says.

“It’s my turn, Steve, I want to make love to you, now.”

He’s surprised when Steve doesn’t immediately smile, or return the sentiment, instead he considers it as if it is a proposition or a business deal. Normally, he’d take it as an insult, but there’s something so odd, so off about Steve, that Tony marks it as part of the whole puzzle. He knows how to get what he wants, he drops into his role.

“Get upstairs, put on the cock ring, I don’t want you coming again until you have permission. Lay on the bed and wait for me, do you understand?”

Steve nods and disappears up the stairs with only a light padding of his feet to signal his exit. Tony hears him move across the floor as the ceiling creaks. As he does, Tony retrieves his cell phone from the table near the door. 

He hits the connect icon and waits. It takes a few rings before a strong voice answers.

“Wilson.”

“I need the whole story.”

“Excuse me, who is this?”

“Don’t you have caller ID, every phone has caller ID. You should know who I am by now,” Tony says.

“You might want to say hello Sam, how are you doing Sam. I need a favor Sam before you throw out demands.”

Tony sighs. He thinks he likes his friends better. “Listen, I’m grateful you were there for Steve, but right now, I need to know the whole story.”

“I told you it, and the rest, well you can see on you tube, because most of the battle on the causeway was captur-.”

“No, what’s eating him?”

“Seriously, you’re going to ask me that question. Pretty obvious to me, don’t you think?”

Tony blows a huff of air through his teeth. He definitely likes his friends better. “I get it, I get his issues with Bucky and the whole Winter Soldier thing, but he’s tense, beyond tense. I need to know-.” He needs to know how far he can push him before Steve breaks. The tension held in his shoulders, in his muscles had been far more than Tony realized. Breaking Steve and taking him apart so that he can renew himself are two vastly different things. “I need to know.”

“Okay, let me tell you a story, Steve was pretty shook up when he realized that the assassin after him and Natasha was his old buddy.”

“I figured as much.”

“No, you don’t get it, I mean shocked so much he literally stood there and let Hydra take him in. He was paralyzed by it.”

“But he held it together enough to fashion a plan to take down three Helicarriers,” Tony points out.

“Man, you did not see him the minutes afterward. They locked him up in this thing in the SUV, I can’t even describe it. Re-enforced concrete or some shit, and he let them. He was quiet and motionless. I got the feeling he had sirens in his head screaming so loud he couldn’t hear anything else. If I never see a man that lost again, it will be too soon,” Sam says.

“But still he pulled it together,” Tony says and he’s grasping; he wants to know Steve’s strong.

“He did, he did, but that was Captain America, not Steve Rogers. What you do when you’re a soldier, it’s different than who you are when you’re a man, a friend. It’s not the same,” Sam says and his voice carries the burden of knowing the facts intimately. 

The fact is though, Tony thinks he gets it now. Captain America held it together, but Steve Rogers is coming apart at the seams. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Be careful, if he blows up, you might not want to be around then,” Sam says and hangs up after Tony thanks him. 

With that warning, Tony sits for a while longer, staring into the fire and balancing his plans and Steve’s needs against one another. He peers up the staircase and knows he should go and join Steve. 

As he crosses to the staircase, he stops by the playroom and catches the door to close it. Perhaps it isn’t time, perhaps the play can wait for a while. He sighs and part of him relaxes. He’s not sure he’s prepared himself for the intensiveness of the fourth bead. Climbing the stairs, he clears his head. He needs to confront Steve but not aggressively. 

Part of him fears what lies ahead. He recognizes the signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome when he sees them. He fights his own battles with it every day. It’s not like it completely disappears, it’s something he manages, copes, and accommodates. Steve hasn’t had that ability. People look at Steve and see him as the pinnacle, the paragon of heroism. He doesn’t get to break down or fall apart or shatter. He cannot be fragile.

But he is.

Tony steps toward the bedroom and, before he enters, takes a deep breath and walks in. Lounging on the bed, Steve has a tablet and looks up from it to smile at Tony. He places the tablet on the bedside table.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Oh,” Tony says and scrambles mentally around trying to find a good lie, a believable story. He decides on diversion. “You heard that, oh the enhanced hearing.”

“Yeah, you know about that, so what’s going on?” Steve says and somehow manages to look authoritarian even in the nude.

“I wanted to,” Tony stops because he doesn’t know how to talk about this kind of stuff with Steve. When he had been going through his stint with PTSD, he’d ended up shredding their relationship, ripping apart his relationship with Pepper, and then nearly getting Steve killed in the process. He’s not good at the talking thing. 

He puts a knee on the bed and then settles down next to Steve. “I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay, adjusting.”

“So what, you called up Sam?”

“You figured it was Sam or you knew it was Sam?”

“Figured. So, what did he say?” Steve says and his eyes are flat again, and distant. It sends chills up and down Tony’s spine.

“He said you had a hard time that you could deal as Captain America, but as Steve Rogers, not so much.” He watches Steve’s expression, sees how controlled and nearly cold it remains. He reaches out and touches Steve’s ankle. “Come on, tell me.”

Steve blinks too many times and says, “I don’t think we should go there, not on the first night.”

“Then when? How am I supposed to help you Steve, if you don’t tell me how?”

“You know what I need. You don’t need to know why,” Steve says and there’s an underlying tone, close to a threat. 

Tony lifts his hand, and perches it inches away from Steve. “I can’t do this if you’re not honest with me. I need to know how to work it, you, I need to know I’m touching your soul and this isn’t just a game.”

Steve smirks, and moves to get out of bed, but Tony grabs his ankle and keeps him in place, knowing full well that Steve could knock him off like a flea. “You believe in souls now, Tony.”

Tony flinches and shakes his head. “You know what I mean, don’t be a douchebag.” 

Resigned, Steve doesn’t try and move away again. He clasps each of his thighs and his grip looks like iron; Tony thinks he’ll leave marks. “All I wanted to do was save him, and I couldn’t do that. I always did everything, everyone expected of me. I was asked once to be a good man, not a perfect soldier but a good man. Sometimes,” he takes a breath, then releases it. “Sometimes, I think that’s all I am – a perfect soldier.”

“That’s not true,” Tony says without hesitation. “I’ve seen you, you’re more than a soldier, you are a good man. You’re the man everyone wants to be-.”

“But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Bucky can’t come to me, Tony. He can’t. I read the file, I know who the ghost, the Winter Soldier is, was. I know. How does my friend come to me, come to Captain America and all that stands for, and let me help him.”

“What? You think he’ll worry about you judging him?” Tony says and shakes his head. “You think that he’ll pass up the chance-.”

“He already did, Tony, he was the one who pulled me out of the Potomac. He left-.”

Tony reaches over and this time Steve lets him place a hand over his clenched ones. “You don’t know why he left, according to Sam you were pretty much unconscious. You don’t know.”

Steve inhales and it shakes him, but he ignores it to say, “I have to save him, Tony. He’s all I have.”

Words can be bricks, they can build a foundation that leads to a house and sense of belonging, but words can also batter like rocks from an avalanche, pounding down to pulverize all in their path. Tony holds on through the storm of the rocks as they tumble over him. He tries to shield his heart, but he knows, feels, deep inside that he’ll fail.

He slips his hand up and cups Steve’s jaw. If this is all he’ll have, if this is it, then Tony will take it all. He tries not to let it surprise him, after all he fucks up all his relationships one way or another. He should have never let Steve go to SHIELD, he should have fought and kept him on their island getaway forever. Together they could have played and loved and been safe from all that haunted them.

Leaning forward he waits and Steve closes his eyes, perched forward to kiss and be kissed. Tony obliges because those lips, those eyes, everything about Steve beckons him. He kisses then, he falls into it, and makes it an art form, like he does when he creates. He explores different avenues, follows inspiration, and allows his mind to cast freely about in the dark recesses where hope forms. 

He wants Steve to know in action that Tony loves him. Right now, he has Steve in his hands, Bucky lost his chance and Tony will grab his with both hands and hold on until he’s bloodied and bruised. He kisses lips and eyes and temples, only to come back to lips again, dragging his tongue along the rim and then seeking entrance but only to tantalize. 

He runs hands across pectorals and draws out fingertips around and tugging at nipples until Steve hitches and arches into Tony. He trails downward, tasting and licking and kissing as he does. He wants to fill his senses with Steve, he wants to drink in and get drunk on Steve. He wonders if he’s fooling himself, if he’s traded one addiction for another. 

“Tony,” Steve whispers as he laps at a nipple and fingers the other one. His voice is already wrecked and he moves into Tony’s ministrations as if they hadn’t been parted for months on end. 

Tony follows with line upon line of kisses with the purpose to anoint and entice at the same time. Steve curls his arms around him, holding him, keeping him close and, for a moment, Tony believes everything will be okay.

Once, long winters ago, when they’d been apart and Tony had worked himself into a frenzy due to his own turn around the merry go round, he’d made the mistake of taking out his angst and anxiety on Steve. It had been the only time Steve had safeworded out of their play. They split then, Tony won’t invite PTSD to do such damage to his relationship with Steve again.

He surrenders to the feeling blooming, the need to be part of Steve, to continue to partner with him as well as their play. Every aspect of his relationship with Steve is critical from the amazing fellatio Steve gives to the spats they have over strategies. 

Steve hisses out a breath as Tony takes him in, his full length in one smooth stroking motion into his mouth. He licks at the rim of the cock ring, and slides his tongue under his cock near the throbbing blood vessel. 

Sounds come out of Steve not coherent but broken and mumbled but he holds onto Tony’s head, carding fingers through his hair. He intends to bring Steve to the edge and then ease off, again and again. As he lines the slit at the tip of Steve’s cock with his tongue, Steve arches and then stalls, trying to hold back and Tony gives him a second. He drops back down on the mattress as Tony sits up oozes lube out onto his fingers and then turns back to Steve.

As he watches, Steve’s eyes wait, believing and open. He looks like the first time they made love, shattered yet powerful, a person begging to be taken apart and then pieced back together again. Tony leans down and slides two fingers without resistance. Steve is pliant, relaxed, he drops his head back on the pillow as Tony works into him.

“Babe, you’re all mine, you know that right?” Tony says and he knows he shouldn’t push, but he has to know, he has to lay claim to this beast of a man. If he doesn’t he’ll descend into the pit of hell he’d once occupied so long ago. “Babe?”

“Yeah,” he says in breathless tones. He has his arms splayed out, his bent legs droop to the side, his head tilted up as Tony opens him. “Anything, Tony. Anything. You’re-.” He stops and clenches his teeth as his cock spurts a bit of pre-come onto his belly.

“I’ll help you, okay?” Tony says and grasps the base of Steve’s cock near the ring. He tightens his fist and Steve releases a breath.

“Good, good,” Steve says and it sounds more like a prayer. “Don’t want to come, please.”

“Are you sure, Babe?” Tony says and places a third finger beside the other two, slightly caressing his sweet spot.

“Just stay like this,” Steve replies and his expression so blissed out that it sends fire through Tony heated and urgent that he pulls his fingers out and shove in with a firm demanding stroke.

Steve cries out and his ass comes off the bed. 

“Okay, okay,” Tony says, petting a hand up and down Steve’s flank. He eases down and wraps his legs around Tony’s waist.

“More.”

“Gonna take you to the edge again and again, that okay?”

“Green,” Steve says while nodding. His eyes so innocent, so shining that it twists tight in Tony’s groin.

He starts a rhythm both brutal but comforting. Watching Steve’s breathing pattern, Tony alternates between a vicious pounding and a tender rocking motion. Quick intakes of breath, followed by a crisp whine and Tony slows down to almost no movement at all, until Steve gets grabby and clutches onto Tony’s arms until he’s sure he’ll have bruises come morning. He swings in and out of the frantic to the sublime. 

Gritting his teeth, Steve cranes his neck back as if to show complete submission to Tony, as if to lay himself vulnerable, bare, and defenseless. The warm spiral of want screws down and through Tony until it turns searing and he’s hyperventilating. He needs to come, but since Steve determined not to, Tony promises himself not to come inside him until he’s ready. Together, they’ll do it together.

He pulls out and the loss of Steve enveloping him sends a shudder through him. He grabs onto his dick as Steve looks down at him. Without pause he seizes Steve’s cock, holding it firm so he can’t come. Using his other hand, he strokes his own dick in a fierce rhythm. Before he can take a full breath as he sees Steve floating deep in subspace, Tony clenches tight, screams out, and spills all over Steve’s belly and cock. It takes Tony’s fist to stop Steve from coming. 

Panting and nearly whimpering, Steve rides the feeling until he can control his orgasm, until he can stop it completely. As Steve settles, Tony bends down and licks his cock, lingering down to his balls and lapping slightly at his entrance. 

“Tony, please,” Steve says and his voice is a ruin of emotions. 

Tony adds his fingers as he tongues Steve. He licks upward and drags his kiss over Steve’s balls and to the base of his cock. He starts to slowly pump his hand up and down, forcing pre-come but stuttering the motion so that he can’t get off.

Steve shakes his head back and forth, cursing, crying, and murmuring Tony’s name. He kisses upwards again, sucking a bit at the tip and then following the contours of Steve’s sculpted torso. He crawls up Steve, kissing and licking, not forgetting nipples as he rakes his teeth over one then the other. Finally he settles at the notch of Steve’s throat, biting to leave marks and causing Steve to bend into him. 

Once Steve pants and falls into Tony’s arms as he rolls them over, Tony places Steve on his chest and says, “Are we good? Do you want to come?”

“Hmm? Good?” Steve mumbles and licks lightly at Tony’s nipple, kisses and blowing. 

“Good? Green, Babe.” He can still feel Steve’s hard erection against his leg.

“Yeah, very good, very green.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to come?” Tony says.

“Don’t want to, want to stay here like this, with you,” Steve says and he nuzzles into Tony. 

Tearing Steve apart used to terrify Tony. The strong and powerful, the resilient Captain at his hands, kneeling at his feet was a huge responsibility. Yet now, as he pets his hand through Steve’s hair, and kisses the crown of his head, he can only cherish the moments. All too often Steve dons the Captain’s star and shuffles off his mortal, fallible self to transform into the heroic icon with everyone’s expectation’s on his shoulders.

Tony reaches down and removes the cockring; there’s a moment when Steve hisses but he controls it and buries his head in Tony’s shoulder. Tony rubs his back, quieting him as he shudders through the need, as he offers up and gives Tony total control of his pleasure. 

As they lie on the bed and the moonless night surrounds them, Tony cradles Steve in his arms. Sometimes it surprises him how such a huge and powerful man can find shelter in Tony’s arms. 

“Someday, soon, when you’re ready, I want to show you something.”

“The chair?” Steve sounds tentative, hopeful, yet concerned.

“Yes, the chair, and the things it can do. I want to,” Tony pauses, finds the courage and continues. “I want to show it to you, I want to have you come until you’re begging not to, I want to see how many times you can come.”

“Okay,” Steve says and sleep laces his voice. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“We should clean up.”

“Maybe,” Steve says and kisses Tony’s throat.

“Yes,” Tony insists. 

“Do you have a weird obsessive cleaning fetish?” 

“I think that’s a few different psychological disorders mixed together,” Tony says and sits up as he dislodges Steve.

Steve blinks as Tony switches on the light. He’s still half hard, and Tony can see he’s not tracking as well as the good Captain would. Stretching out, he caresses a line down Steve’s jawline.

“You with me.”

“I’m a little, you know,” he says and circles his finger in the air. 

“You like it?” 

Steve smiles and there’s a potency to it that rings true and a clear with warmth like the tropical waters of the Islands. “You bet.” He laughs a little and it’s distant. As they walk to the small bathroom, Steve asks, “Could you plug me?”

“What?” Tony gets a wash cloth and turns on the water to warm it. 

Steve languidly strokes his cock, keeping it full. “I don’t want to lose this right away. I thought maybe you could put a plug in me while I sleep.”

“I could.”

“Then if you wake up and want some, you could just,” Steve colors a bit but he rushes the rest of the words. “Pop it out and shove right in. You wouldn’t even have to wake me.”

Tony grips the edge of the small white porcelain sink, and wishes he hadn’t come already. “Damn it, what you do to me.”

“Can’t be half as good as what you do to me,” Steve says and pads out of the room only to come back seconds later with a large buttplug. “Do the honors?”

Tony licks his lips and nods as Steve gets on all fours, ass presented high in the air. Even Tony’s spent dick gives a twitch as he digs out the extra tube of lube from the cabinet, smears it up and works it into Steve’s already loose entrance. Steve lets out a low groan. 

Tony fists his cock, brings it to mast again and then abandons his task. Steve rocks a few times, looking for his balance as he sinks deeper into subspace. Tony keeps his hands on Steve throughout his battle to adjust. 

After he cleans them up a little, he leads Steve back to the bed, they curl up and Steve says into Tony’s shoulder, “The chair?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Good, it’ll be good,” Tony promises.

“The closet?” 

Tony’s not sure Steve is ready for the closest, not yet, and he has to be careful. The bonds, their bond, has been strengthen yet it’s still fragile, regrowing. He won’t do anything to strip it, or threaten its health.

“Soon.”


	4. Chapter 4

Standing in the center of the kitchen with the refrigerator door wide open, Tony glares at the carton of eggs. He’s not a fan of cooking eggs; it isn’t rocket science, or, at least, it shouldn’t be but somehow the lowly egg defeats him. He grimaces and closes the door. Going over to the coffeepot, he sets it up to brew. When the drape of his sleeping pants hit his dick he winces. He’s a little over done.

He barely slept a wink last night. Just the thought of Steve slumbering next to him and the knowledge that a huge buttplug was residing in his entrance kept Tony aware most of the night. By four in the morning, he finally succumbed to the lure, stripped off his pajamas, lubed up, and eased the plug out of a sleeping Steve. He pushed in and clenched hard and fast because just the idea of taking Steve like this caused his gut to turned over and tensed every tendon and muscle in his body. 

He didn’t last long; but he wrapped his arm around Steve’s waist and took his flaccid cock, stroking it in time to his rhythm. As Tony hit the rise of his climax, Steve woke up and groaned, pushed back, and fought against his own needs as Tony filled him. Once done, Tony clamped fingers at the base of Steve’s erection, keeping him from coming as he slide the plug back in place. The idea of Steve filled up, messy with his come, thrilled Tony. He had whispered to Steve not to come, told him to go back to sleep, and then rolled over and finally found sleep himself. He hadn’t occurred to him until he was fully awake the next morning that he’d promised himself not to come inside of Steve until he earned it. He doesn’t think taking what he wants and using Steve fits the bill. 

He paid Steve back by kissing him awake and going down on him. By eight in the morning, he was in the middle of giving Steve fellatio, yet Steve begged him to not come, not yet. The man was strung out and breathy as Tony tormented him. As he licked and kissed, he lifted up and watched as Steve’s eyes grew hazier, almost drunk in their aspect. 

“I want you to clean up, then I want to show you what the chair can do instead of using a plug,” Tony had said in a quiet voice as he tenderly caressed Steve’s face. “You’ve done so good in the past day. So good. How are you doing?”

“Green,” Steve said but he sounded very far away.

“Did you get what I said?”

“Clean up, something other about a chair, got it,” Steve said. He waves Tony away and then snuggles further into the covers.

Tony left then, usually he stays with Steve, does the clean-up himself. But he wanted to get big boy some breakfast. 

As he considers breakfast, Tony shakes his head. “This is not going to work.” He needs a better plan as far as feeding Steve. He might be able to take care of his needs in some aspects, but cooking is stretching Tony a little farther afield than he would like. He rummages through the shelves in the pantry cupboard. “Frosted flakes, they’re great, but not what the doctor ordered. Except there is no doctor, just me. Well, not that kind of doctor.” He chuckles at his joke.

He is not giving Steve Frosted Flakes for breakfast. He hears Steve creaking across the floor and knows he’ll be appearing any minute. Scrambled eggs? Bagels? Does he have cream cheese, does Steve even like cream cheese? Damn, damn, damn. This is what couples know, this is not what he knows, and it jars him. 

Steve appears as Tony’s about ready to consider whether or not he should pull out his phone and call on JARVIS for some assistance, or at least moral support. Steve’s glorious; he’s just showered and his skin’s a nice pink from being scrubbed. He’s also shaved in all the right places again. His eyes are bright but not overly focused. He looks slightly drugged out and Tony has a moment of doubt. What if this relationship, this whole thing is just Steve’s escape, like alcohol or drugs?

“Tony,” Steve says and his tone is tender, almost sweet. “Thought maybe shaving would help, later with the chair. Or now.” He looks to the play room with its door closed. The slight yearning in his voice sets a slow burning in Tony’s gut.

“We need to,” Tony says as he looks up and down at Steve’s naked body. He shoves his indecent and quite deliciously wicked thoughts away. “You need to get dressed.”

“I thought I didn’t earn my clothes yet,” Steve says with a snicker.

“You’re not a house elf for god’s sakes.”

“What?”

“Harry Potter put it on the list,” Tony says. “And you need clothes, we’re going out to breakfast.”

Turning, Steve points at the large window looking out toward the small lake. “Hmm, Tony, have you checked the weather forecast for today?”

“What?”

“It’s going to snow.”

“It does that in winter,” Tony says and picks up his phone. He forgot to charge it. He has to find his charger, and crosses to the staircase to retrieve it from upstairs.

“But it’s supposed snow all day. I’m not sure it’s a good idea-.”

Tony stops and studies Steve. “It’s the cold, right? You have a problem with it? Ice, cold, we should have gone back to the Islands.” He tries for sensitive and he comes off arrogant. He really needs to take lessons in tone and temperament.

“No, I mean, no I don’t have a problem with the cold. But it is going to get fairly rough out there today. I read it on the Weather Channel.”

“Read it?”

“My app,” Steve says and smiles. He looks like the Cheshire cat. 

“Just go get dressed,” Tony says as he scoots him up the stairs. “I have the SUV with me, you remember, the one we bonded over it.” 

As they enter the bedroom, Tony searches for his charger. 

“The limited Tony Stark addition?” Steve says as he roots around in his luggage looking for something suitable to wear. “Where are we going?”

“Just a little diner I found a few days ago,” Tony says and plugs in his phone. He should charge it in the SUV, but he has to get dressed too; the phone will charge a fair amount in the time it takes them to get ready. He grabs his shaving kit as Steve dresses.

Tony’s in the bathroom when he hears Steve call, “I’m going to shovel the driveway. Be right outside.”

“Okay.” He finishes up his shave and quickly dons a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. That should be enough, besides the Benz is a GL-class SUV and it’s the AMG model to boot – heavy duty all terrain with modifications by Tony Stark. Can’t get better on any market. 

He slaps on some aftershave and smiles. This will be a good start to their day, something nice and normal. Something – he stops and chides himself. He shouldn’t think of what they do as not normal; it isn’t abnormal, it’s just not puritan. It’s okay to like a few kinks. He knows this, but why then does he feel like he has to prove to Steve he can be the guy next door, the nice, straight-laced guy next door. Shaking his head, he zips up the hoodie and skips down the stairs.

Tony Stark and straight laced guy next door do not belong in the same sentence, let alone the same paragraph, page, or shit, universe.

When he opens the door, he finds Steve has completed shoveling the drive way of about a foot of snow dumped on them overnight. He’s currently busy cleaning off the vehicle and he turns to Tony. Frowning, Steve gestures at him. “What’s up with that?”

Tony looks down at himself, raises an eyebrow, and says, “What, it’s me. Did you expect someone else?”

“A hoodie? Tony,” Steve says as puffs of cold air swirl around his head. He’s in a thick wool coat with hood and leather gloves that actually have fingers. “Don’t you have anything else?”

“Nope,” Tony says and presses the button to open the SUV. “Hop in lover boy, we got some eating to do. Plus, we should probably buy the laundry detergent.”

Steve scowls at him, but finishes off cleaning the snow away, and then jumps in. He pulls off the scarf he has tucked into his coat and gives it to Tony. “Here.”

“I don’t need it, plus it has little reindeer on it. It looks stupid.”

“It’s a Christmas scarf. Rhodes gave it to me last Christmas.” 

“We weren’t even talking back then,” Tony says.

“No, we weren’t,” Steve says and ignores the sidelong glance Tony gives him.

What the hell? His friends are traitors. He takes the scarf, if not for keeping warm then for evidence to show to Rhodes to prove he is a traitor and Tony knows it. 

The engine roars to life and he backs out of the driveway. It isn’t an easy ride and he’s happy the SUV is an all-terrain vehicle with the 40:60 front to rear torque otherwise they might be skidding all over the road. 

“Where the hell is all the snow removal equipment around here,” Tony says and steers around a bend. The snow on the road is thick and deep and he estimates hasn’t been cleared since midnight. It isn’t currently snowing, but the sky threatens and clearly says it isn’t done with them yet. He hates snow; he’s definitely a Southern California boy.

“How far is the place?” Steve asks and plays with the console, searching for music or something. Tony smiles. He recalls a time when they were just starting to get to know one another and Steve didn’t even want to listen to music. It had been right after the Chitauri, when Fury worried about Steve’s adjustment in the modern world. Listening to music for Steve only emphasized how out of step with the times he was. 

“Don’t know,” Tony says. “Maybe about ten miles or so?”

“Can we, you know,” Steve looks around the cab and points to the sky. “Ask JARVIS?”

“Deactivated in the SUV.”

Steve startles. “Why would you do that?”

After he shifts gears, Tony reaches over and grabs Steve’s thigh. “Just wanted it to be you and me, Babe, just you and me.”

“That’s, that’s really sweet, Tony,” Steve says and he’s positively beaming. Seeing his reaction, his genuine joy in Tony’s dedication validates Tony’s choice to leave all of his crutches behind for their weeks away. He bows his head as Tony sneaks a peek over at him. Without a sound, Steve mutter, “Wow.”

“But it’s near town, not far from the house.” Tony reverts back to their original conversation. He’d like to bask in the glory of Steve’s joy but he doesn’t want to seem too egotistical. “Great Belgium waffles, believe it or not.”

“Hmm,” Steve says and reaches over to clasps the hand resting on the stick shift . When Tony spies him as they drive through the streets laden with snow, he notes how soft and sweet, how young but satisfied Steve looks. 

“You happy?” Tony can’t help but ask.

“Yeah, yeah I think I am.” 

When they arrive at the diner, Tony pulls into a spot close to the front of the restaurant. Even though they are in small town USA, and he should be more careful because they haven’t come out yet to the general populace, Tony grasps Steve’s hand as they trudge through the snow toward the tiny diner. They’re lucky it’s open and there are only a few patrons but the place still has a homey, old fashioned feel. As they enter, Tony watches Steve react to it.

“Wow,” he mouths again. He voices the words a little louder when he says, “Tony, this reminds me-.”

“I thought it would. One of the reasons I scoped this area out was that it seemed to be lost in time. I thought you might like it.” 

An older waitress greets them, her gaze drifts down to their linked hands, but she doesn’t say anything and her smiles doesn’t fade. Tony considered it a win.

“You’re back, nice to see you,” the older waitress whose name is Patty. “Come on, you can take any table in the place. Only old Ray from the brewery hanging out.” She points to an older gentleman hunched over the main counter.

The place does harken back to the early 20th century with its pitted wooden flooring, the tables with checkerboard table clothes, and the old vinyl cushions on the chairs. 

He escorts Steve to his favorite table that happens to be out of the way and toward the large window in the side of the diner. They both slide into the corner booth and it allows for him to sit next to Steve without looking like he’s jump back in time to be on an episode of the Brady Bunch.

The waitress hands them two menus, though Steve takes both of them, slides one over to Tony and then opens his paper menu. 

“Pretty quaint, huh?” Tony says as she leaves.

“Nice, I like it,” Steve says and scans the fare. “I wonder what their meatloaf tastes like.”

“We’re having breakfast, you heathen,” Tony says and pokes at the side of the menu with the breakfast fare. “Belgium waffles to die for.”

“I think I’ll go for the hungry man’s breakfast then,” Steve says and sets the menu aside.

When the waitress returns, Tony orders, “We’ll have a pot of coffee, juice, lots of it – orange, and two Belgium waffles with a side of Canadian bacon.”

“Tony, I-.”

Patty looks kindly at Steve and says in a low whisper that’s not only conspiratorial but also quiet enough that no one else can hear her. “Don’t you worry, my hubby always tried to pull one over on me. I’ll bring you your hungry man’s.”

Steve flashes a smile that’s not at all innocent as she taps her pencil on her pad, glares at Tony, and leaves to call out their order.

“Betsy isn’t getting a tip.”

“Her name is Patty and she is,” Steve says as he chuckles.

“Why does everyone always ends up loving you?” Tony says and he’s teasing but he loves the pink blush to Steve’s cheeks.

“Maybe you should try being nice for a change,” Steve says.

By the time breakfast comes (just what Tony ordered with an additional hungry man’s meal) Steve looks positively radiant from their back and forth bickering. He laughs as he digs into his food.

“I missed this,” Steve says.

“Missed?”

“You know, our arguing all the time,” Steve says. “Feels normal, somehow.”

There’s that word again and it boils up the same worries from before – that maybe they’re just playing and Steve’s waiting for something serious, something permanent, something with a metal arm and no memory. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles and chokes down a little bit more of the waffle with the strawberries decorating it. 

Steve’s yammering away as Tony turns over the idea of normal and what that’s supposed to mean in today’s world. He doesn’t know what normal is; he grew up in a wealthy home with a distant alcoholic father and a mother who was too young to be married to him. He ended up in boarding school and he was/ still is a genius to boot. Nothing about his life is normal. 

Why does it have to be normal?

What’s so good about normal?

“Fucking boring that’s what it is,” Tony murmurs into his coffee as Patty comes up to the table to place the check on the side underneath the saucer for his coffee. 

“What?” Steve asks as he chows down on the other Belgium waffle. His hungry man’s breakfast is dust.

“Watch your mouth, young man. I can tolerate and accept quite a bit, but dirty language doesn’t fly in my joint,” Patty says and then smiles at Steve.

“He was in the army, he’s got one filthy mouth,” Tony says.

“If he treats you bad, I got a nice nephew been looking around for a good catch,” Patty winks at Steve. “Even better than Iron Man.”

Tony stutters a little at that one, while his identity is no secret he figured no one around here knew or cared since there hadn’t been any trespassing on his privacy the entire time he’d been at the cottage so far. She winks again and then disappears into the back.

“The look on your face,” Steve says and shakes his head with a rueful smile. “Not much surprises you, but when you are surprised, it’s adorable.”

“I’ll have you know I’m debonair and handsome, not adorable.”

“Oh you’re adorable and cute, sometimes even cuddly,” Steve replies as he reaches for the check.

Tony slaps his hand away. “I’m supposed to be feeding you, and you already went ahead and ordered what you wanted instead of what I told you to eat.” 

Blinking, Steve gaps at him, then closes his mouth and nods, while pulling his hand away. The color on his cheeks reddens and he turns away. Tony gets up, lingers by the edge of the booth, grips Steve’s shoulder once and then goes to the cashier (who happens to be Patty again) to pay. When he returns he throws a twenty on the table for the waitress and says without looking, “Color?”

Steve clears his throat and says, “Green.”

“Okay, then, stand up we’re going over to the five and dime to pick up some laundry detergent.”

“Five and dime? Seriously, they have one?” Steve’s positively buzzing now, the stress of their confrontation melting away.

“Yeah, big boy, they do,” Tony says with fondness. “I picked this place out for you.”

They head out of the door, and the wind hits him hard in the face. It’s colder than a witch’s tit, whatever that means, and he feels the hair in his nostrils instantly freeze. “Shit.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets and doesn’t protest when Steve wraps the scarf around his neck and face. The store isn’t far from the diner, and they cross the one signal main street on the diagonal.

A tiny bell rings as they pass through the door. Steve marvels at the store, loitering in the aisles, picking up some of the products and telling stories about them. The place seems like a Brigadoon to Tony. They end up with a cart full of stuff they don’t need but Tony decides to purchase anyhow because seeing the twinkle in Steve’s eye is worth it. 

When they get to the register the old man eyes the store’s windows and, as he checks them out, says, “Hope you boys got some good tires on your car, ‘cause we’re in for a bad one.”

Steve concentrates on the storm as it whips by the windows. It’s actively snowing and not the winter wonderland kind of snow, but the hideous – you’re going to die – kind of snow.

“We’re good,” Tony says and hopes he’s not lying. They don’t have a lot of curves or hills to navigate. Steve turns to pick up the paper bags of goods and they head out to their vehicle which is across the street – and they can’t even see it because of the blowing snow.

Tony eyes Steve for a second, but puts his head down and forges across the street. They get there without a word, and Tony’s chattering in his light hoodie. Steve loads up the SUV as Tony hops in and starts the engine. Steve takes a few minutes to clean off the vehicle of what snow has accumulated in the short time they’ve been shopping.

“Crappers, it is cold out,” Tony says as Steve joins him in the cab.

“I told you that was too light to wear.”

“Well, the heat is on and we’ll be home in less than a half hour.”

Except they aren’t.

That wonderful traction control and 40:60 blah blah blah isn’t worth beans because he skids and fights for control on one of the only downward slopes that curves to the right. He struggles with the steering wheel and, thankfully, the road is deserted. They hit a patch of black ice under the snow layer and slide sideways down the lane. Foot off the brake, he turns into the skid and rights the SUV but into the wrong lane. As he grapples to get the vehicle under control and out of the oncoming lane, a huge truck hauling a load barrels toward them. Tony floors it and the SUV screeches across the road; the truck misses them and he curses. 

Glancing in his rearview mirror, he notes that the damned trucker didn’t even stop. But then again, he shouldn’t be surprised, it’s hardly easy to maneuver in this weather. The moment it takes him to right the SUV and get into the correct lane, he glides into another patch of ice recently cleared of snow by the blizzard like winds. 

“Damn it,” Tony says and loses control.

“Tony,” Steve says in warning and they’re hitting the culvert at the side of the road. It’s barely free of snow, but it’s a divot in the landscape causing the SUV with its high center of gravity to pitch and roll as it catches in the depression. 

Before he realizes what’s happening, Steve yanks him hard from his seat and as he seizes him into his arm tears away the seatbelt to throw them both into the backseat. As the momentum flips them onto the ceiling of the SUV and the groceries fly free Steve’s body covers and shelters him. He hears glass shattering and something ripping through the dash. The yawn and crumple of metal screams out as the vehicle comes to a juddering stop. 

He blinks and the world around him feels like a movie filmed in the shaking camera style. He can’t get his bearings, he’s choking on air. His heart stops in his chest as he think of Steve over him, protecting him from harm. The heavy weight pressing against his chest, pressing him into the cushion of the backseat happens to be Steve. He’s not sure if Steve’s alive or awake. He pushes at him, feels the cold slick of air as it whispers into the vehicle from the hole in the windshield.

He already has compromised lungs due to the hole in his chest where the arc reactor once resided. Now, the cold and the fear seeps in and he can’t move, can’t respond, can’t do anything. He’s stricken with terror that Steve may be dead and he’s the cause of it. He’s no superhero.

“Tony?”

A few minutes, he needs a few minutes as his heart clogs his throat and the jostling in his brains fires every circuit. Steve comes to himself faster, and he’s leaning up and away from Tony.

“Are you okay?”

He should be asking Steve, not the other way around, he should be caring and taking stock of Steve. Why does he fail?

“Hmm, yeah,” Tony says before he’s done a thorough examination of his body parts. He hopes they’re all still there, at least his dick. He hopes his dick is still intact. He’s brain is still latching onto sarcasm and wit to get through, instead of focusing on reality and helping the situation. “Christ, what the hell.”

Steve stumbles off of him and plops to the side. Both air bags are deploy up front as well as the side air bags. A tree limb impaled the front driver’s airbag and top of the seat. 

“Shit,” Tony says as he realizes the limb would have skewered him in the throat. He can’t help the quaking of his muscles and brain cells as he acknowledges that Steve saved his life. 

“Tony, Tony,” Steve says and lightly draws a hand up to his jaw. “It’s okay, we’re okay. You’re okay.”

“Jesus,” Tony says, murmuring it over and again. He’s back in Afghanistan, the Humvee exploding with rapid reports of gunfire and all through it, he hears Steve.

“You’re with me, it’s okay. Everything is going to be fine. Listen to my voice, we’re safe. It’s safe.” Steve brushes a hand down Tony’s jaw, holds him close and murmurs quiet words of solace. “I’m here, I’m here for you.”

He shudders as the images and cold sweeps over him. “St-Steve?”

“You back with me, now?” he asks and kisses Tony’s temple. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, I just-.”

“Don’t worry about it, I get it.” Steve has him curled into his arms, holding him tight. “Why do you think I ended up at Sam’s? He works with vets that have some problems readjusting to the world.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony says and he’s suddenly too hot and too cold. 

Steve continues to rock him, keeping him warm and soothing him. “Better?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” He’s not sure he is good. His mind jumbles and fumbles along with cobbled images of yesterday and of the present colliding together like a possessed version of a kaleidoscope.

“Are you sure? We need to get out of here, I think. The storm is picking up and the SUV is torn apart. Best thing would be to get back home.”

He’s not sure about anything. He knows he shouldn’t be he lays his head on Steve’s shoulder, lets his body shudder through the aftershocks and holds on as Steve strokes his hair and buries his face in his hair. 

After a moment, Steve says, “You okay now? We should probably try and contact someone, but I’m not sure anyone would be able to get to us.”

“Damn it, I left my phone at the cottage,” Tony says and moves slightly away from Steve. 

“Mine didn’t survive the crash,” Steve says and shows it to Tony. It was skewered by part of the tree branch which would have punctured Steve’s back pocket. 

Tony can’t help but smile. “Shit, you were nearly stabbed in the butt.”

“Technically, I was stabbed but my phone saved my butt for you.” He’s charming and sweet, and Tony cannot see why or how he deserves him. “Maybe the SUV’s system.”

Tony fumbles up as Steve moves around him. It takes a moment to reach into the front seat. Yanking open the dashboard panel becomes a useless chore because the tree branch pulverized his control computer as well. “It’ll take a while to fix this.”

“Maybe we can walk the rest of the way home?” Steve says from the backseat. He’s digging around the scattered groceries. The SUV partially rolled to its side which both helps and hinders things.

“We’re not far,” Tony says. They’re probably only about two miles out. Of course the track that they’re on leads them through a very unpopulated area of the lake. They will need to either turn back and trek back to the small town or go forward to their little haven.

“I can get us back to the house,” Steve says. His voice rings with Captain America. No doubts, no fears. “But first, you need to take this.” Steve struggles out of his wool coat and offers it to Tony.

“No, no,” Tony says and pushes it back. “You need it.”

“Tony, it’s only a few miles. I can deal with it. You’ve got nothing but a hoodie and you’re already shivering from the shock of the crash.”

“I don-.”

“Take it, I won’t take no for an answer, and if there’s ever a moment you think I’m going to switch roles it’s right now, right here. Take it.” Steve dumps it on Tony’s lap as he works the door latch to free them.

Without any other rebuttal, Tony shrugs on the coat and instantly feels better. He doesn’t know if it’s physical or if it is psychological – the idea of having Captain America take care of him, saving him is appealing. 

“Come on, you have to climb out this way,” Steve says, standing in the midst of a raging flurry of snow as it blows around him. Flakes catch in his hair and eyelashes. Tony manages to clamor out of the vehicle and huddles in the coat besides Steve. 

Climbing up the side of the vehicle, Steve grasps him and hauls him free of the crash. It looks worse from the outside. There’s a huge crumple of metal and the tree is more than half into the front of the SUV. 

“I’ll miss that car,” Tony says as he blows into his hands. 

“Hands in pockets,” Steve says. “We’ll go up the road and toward the house. It shouldn’t take more than a hour at most.”

“We’re a few miles away,” Tony screams over the wind. “It’ll take more than that.” Even with Steve’s coat on he’s freezing, and especially since his feet in his simple loafers ($500 loafers) are already numb. 

“Don’t worry, I got you.” Steve pulls the scarf free from Tony’s neck, covers the bottom half of his own face and then heaves Tony off the ground into a bridal carry.

“Hey, what the hell?” 

“It’ll be faster this way, and I’m wearing boots, trust me.” Steve adjusts his hold on Tony and cradles him close to his chest. “Tuck in and hold on, it will be easier on me if you do.”

Tony wants to complain and protest because this is ridiculous, he doesn’t need to be carried. Before he can speak a word though, Steve marches forward and the pure strength and power is awe inspiring. In Steve’s grasp, Tony feels like a child, small and weightless, almost helpless against the magnitude of power. 

The wind lashes the cold like hard pelts of ice on his face and he snuggles further down and feels all the more guilty as Steve slogs through the knee high drifts of snow. The winds continue to sculpt the snow, changing the landscape and blowing the snow laden trees to release their burden. Steve persists and continues without pause.

He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t stop, but treks forward with a single determination that cows Tony. The stunning display turns over in Tony until he’s overwhelmed by the greatness and the total and absolute love Steve has shown him. To lay down his abilities and give over everything he is to Tony, kneel at his feet. The thought leaves Tony humbled and speechless. 

As Steve hikes forward, Tony can feel the thud of his heart through his shirt, can hear the rhythm of his breathing in his lungs as it moves in and out. He doesn’t pause, he never stops. He’s a determined beast of a man on a mission. Tony understand move of what it means to be Captain America, he understands even further how it must be to release that control to someone else.

By the time they turn up the road to the house, Steve’s nose is running and he’s breathing is more labored than it had been, though it’s barely driven like anyone else would be. He plows through the snow, making a path with his legs, not able to lift them through the heavy blanket. The winds and the snow never let up and Steve’s covered. His lips are tinged bluish purple as they round the bend to pass the garage to the house. They reach the house and Steve sets Tony down, and digs the keys out of his pocket.

“Keys?” Tony says and his quakes against the cold.

“Pulled them from the ignition,” Steve says and slides the house key into the lock. Tony really has to change that to a biometric one. The door swings open and Tony drops inside, thankful for the heat and the absence of wind. 

Steve follows him; his face looks raw, his eyes are watering from the piercing cut of the winds.

“Are you okay?” Tony says and strips out of his wet clothes right at the door. Steve follows suit. “Shit, you’re freezing.”

Steve only nods but moves to the small half bath. “You have a cut on your head, we should take care of it.” His words falter and his movements are jerky. 

Tony reaches over to Steve and lays a hand on his face; it’s ice and he has no idea how Steve is not freaking out. Why he isn’t going into a full out, stressed out flashback or something. Steve doesn’t even notice as he warms a cloth under the stream of water and then dabs at Tony’s forehead. 

“Not deep,” Steve says. “Won’t need stitches.”

“Well, that’s good because the nearest hospital is like thirty miles away.” Tony tugs Steve’s hand away and searches his expression, his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Steve meets his gaze for only a moment but then goes back to his task. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“You just walked like three miles or some shit, carrying me, in a damned blizzard. It hasn’t escaped my notice that you’re freezing and it can’t help much that you were once like a capsicle.” Tony holds onto Steve’s hand, feeling the warmth come back into both of them. 

“Having a mental breakdown over my time in the ice is the least of my worries right now, Tony.” Steve finishes by covering Tony’s right eyebrow with butterfly bandages, and then checking his scalp for any other damages. 

It occurs to Tony that Steve’s completely focused on him, his well-being, his health. It smacks him hard and he wonders if he can possibly live up to Steve’s ideals. He’s not normal, he’ll never be normal. Their relationship – is it normal?

Tony bats him away. “Well since we’re both being stubborn and hard-nosed about our potential life threatening injuries, why don’t we get something hot to drink and build a fire?”

Steve smiles. “Sounds like a plan.” He’s still shaking from the cold, but it’s slowing. 

“I’m going to get some dry clothes,” Tony says and crosses over to the staircase, waiting for Steve to follow. Instead, Steve strips down and gathers up the clothes to stick in the laundry nook. “Are you coming?”

Steve peers over at Tony. “Is that an invitation? I thought we were enjoying a fire and maybe tea or hot chocolate or something?”

“No, yes, I mean are you getting dressed?”

“Am I allowed?”

“Oh,” Tony says and stops. “No, no you’re not. After the way you spoke to me, I’d think not.” Even his dick gives a twitch at the command in his voice. “When I get back down, I want you to be ready.”

“Ready?”

“Yes, ready.” He leaves without further explanation. Entering the bedroom, Tony collapses on the bed and stares at the wood beamed ceiling. He’s still jittery inside and fucking – somehow off. He crashed the SUV, ended up with a mild headache, probably a concussion, and he could have frozen to death except for Steve. “Hell of a day.”

“Yeah, it has been,” Steve says from the doorway. He puts his hands up before Tony can say anything. “Sorry, I wanted to make sure you were all right before we fall into a scene or play.”

Tony sits back up and, as if Steve reads his mind, finds himself with arms full of super soldier. Feeling Steve, his solidity, his soft but firm flesh beneath Tony’s callus hands validates everything Tony wants. This man means so much to him, defines what he wants out of life. He lays his head against strong muscles and sighs. Maybe normal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, maybe two superheroes can’t have normal. Maybe this is better than they could wish? 

Maybe.


	5. Chapter 5

“Better?” Steve asks. The look he offers is tender and sweet. How can a man so muscular and full of power present such a loving and gentle touch and expression? They curl into one another on the bed and Tony thinks on how very close they came to losing this today. The crash, the storm, almost defeated everything Tony wishes to build.

“Lots.” Tony considers asking Steve if they can forget about the play, but Steve interrupts his thoughts. It would be nice to only cuddle in one another’s arms for an eternity.

“I’ll go get the fire started, I’m excited to find out what you have planned. You said something about not a plug?” He moves away from Tony’s embrace and there’s an emptiness growing, expanding in Tony.

“Not a plug?” Tony says and then remembers. “Oh, yes. I’ll be right there.”

“Are we using the chair?” Steve says as he stops by the door, not looking back over his shoulder.

“We’ll see how the day goes.”

If Steve’s disappointed with his vague answer he doesn’t show it. He only nods and disappears, descending the stairs. Weighing what’s happened today, Tony recognizes that the situation forced Steve out of their little haven from reality into full Captain America mode. It might be useful to introduce Steve to some of the toys in the room. He straightens his shoulders, it might help him as well. While he would like to hold onto Steve as a lifeline, it’s important to him to give Steve what he wants, and when he needs it. He will not put his needs before Steve’s – he’s too damned central to what and who Tony is now.

He shucks the rest of his clothes and quickly pulls on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He should jump in the shower to warm up, but Steve waits for him downstairs and he has a theory that Steve’s antsy, almost hungry for him to take charge. It isn’t anything that Steve’s done, in fact, over the past hour or so Steve’s shown what a leader and how in charge he can be. It’s just that fact driving Tony now.

He forgets his worries and his habitual ability to talk himself into corners of self-doubt and puts on his mental armor in order to focus on the positive. Ready, he skips down the stairs to find Steve perched at the door to their playroom. When he sees Tony he acts like he’s been caught unawares, but Tony knows better. With Steve’s enhanced senses and hearing, he very well knew that Tony was approaching. 

Clapping his hands together and noticing the enticing fire Steve built, Tony decides it might be time to play along. “So, would you like to spend the afternoon by the fire? I think a nice book, some hot chocolate, which I’m sure I saw in the cupboard might be a good idea. What do you think?”

Naked, it’s obvious what Steve thinks and wants, but he turns his face in profile to avoid Tony’s inquisition. He nods and bites at the corners of his lips. “I could make the hot chocolate, if you want?”

Tony regards his half hard cock, his tension, the way the cold lingers around Steve. He shouldn’t, but he’s supposed to play a part in this, Steve wants a scene, but he doesn’t know truly how to start one. Tony plans on educating him. “Yeah, that would be nice.”

Settling in near the fire, Tony leans back in the recliner and listens as Steve goes about preparing the hot chocolate. “Do we have any cookies? I’d like a cookie and marshmallows in the cocoa, please.”

He hears an audible sigh and grins despite himself. Steve needs to understand their play, and the fourth bead is beyond the playroom. Are they normal? No, Tony concedes this point, but if he’s going to give that thought up, then he has to make what they have the best, because he damn well isn’t going to lose against the ghost come to life Bucky Barnes. He’s going to make sure Steve craves this lifestyle. 

Once he finishes, Steve brings the hot chocolate with marshmallows and cookies out on a tray. He sets it down on the table between the chairs facing the fire and mockingly says, “Your hot cocoa and cookies, my liege.”

“My liege?” Tony says and he feels the air crackle with the fire Steve’s giving off. He’s hot and angry, almost frustrated, and wants more than Tony’s giving him. 

“Anything else?” Steve says and raises an eyebrow.

“Yes, I think so,” Tony says as he clasps Steve’s hand. “I think you’re to call me _my liege_ from now on.”

Steve opens his mouth as if to object, but Tony’s drawing light circles into the palm of his hand with his thumb. Reassuring him, telegraphing his desire to hold Steve and give back what Steve has given him. Steve turns his face again, but only to close his eyes and set his mind back in the game.

“Is that good,” Tony says and his voice feels too harsh for the moment.

“It’s good,” Steve says after a long, painful pause. “Good.”

“Okay then,” Tony says and he tries to keep his tone as light as possible. “Come down here, kneel, and pay attention to my dick.”

Steve drops to his knees and, with somewhat shaky hands, undoes Tony’s zipper. With a little assistance, he draws the jeans down Tony’s hips and then leans forward. Tony isn’t hard at all. 

“You want to go into the playroom, you want to see the chair in action, well, then you better make it worth it.”

Steve bends his head and licks his full lips before dipping down and drawing a long stripe up Tony’s penis. It tantalizes and shocks. Tony lays his head back and allows the sensations of Steve tasting him, sucking and circling his tongue around the head of his dick to wash over him. It warms and excites him, it burns away the cold from outside, the memory of frozen winds and icy skin. He hardens as Steve works and then pushes Steve away and pulls his dick aside to present his balls.

Steve doesn’t need direction, instead he laps at Tony, taking each in his mouth, tugging only with a gentle touch. Tony groans and absently strokes himself as Steve works. 

“That’s good, Babe, that’s good.” Tony closes his eyes as Steve runs his tongue upward. He releases his dick for Steve to take down his throat again, relaxing his jaw and dragging Tony’s dick farther until it hits the back of his throat. “God, I want to fuck your face.” But he won’t. He can’t, not yet.

“Come on,” Tony says and yanks Steve away. One thing that Tony loves to do and never wants to admit the truth of it – he loves to grab Steve’s hair and pull. Maybe it is the moan Steve always lets out as he does, or the way Steve shows his throat to Tony as if in complete and total submission. 

Standing, he lets go of Steve and tucks himself back into his jeans. He trails a hand down Steve’s muscled ribs, points to the cooling hot chocolate and says, “I think we’ll leave that until later, okay?”

With a shudder that’s close to that full body roll Tony knows to show how turned on Steve is, he says, “As you say, my liege.”

Tony smiles, and hooks onto Steve’s hand to lead him to the playroom. When he grips the door knob, he turns to Steve and says, “We’re going to work up to the chair. It’ll take time. Is that okay?”

“Yes.” Steve swallows hard but follows Tony as he opens the door. 

“I understand you don’t want me to bind you with the ropes, but other things?”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll tell me if you get uncomfortable at any time?” Tony says as he presses a hand on Steve’s shoulder to force him to his knees near the side of the room. He has a number of toys placed on a table. Steve kneels on a long cushion with blankets about the area. 

Tony sits down next to him and presses a soft kiss to his lips. “I want you to come today.” Before Steve can reply, Tony places a finger on his lips. “I am going to make you come multiple times. It isn’t going to be pleasurable after a while. I want to see how many times you can come. The first few times, you might find some pleasure but after that, it might not be so much fun, is that okay?”

“Green,” Steve says and shivers against Tony’s hand as it cups his face. 

“I’m going to give you the choice of how you’re going to come the first time. You can do it with my hand on you, or,” Tony says. “You can do it in the chair. Before you answer, please understand in the chair, I won’t be touching you. At all.”

Steve looks over to the chair as if it’s become something other, something sinister. “Oh.”

“Let’s check again, color?”

“Green,” Steve replies but his voice is breathy, losing air.

“What do you chose?” Tony says, he wonders what he wishes Steve will answer. He doesn’t have a clear view in his head which he wants more.

“Your hand,” Steve says as if defiant, almost challenging Tony.

Raising an eyebrow, Tony nods and says, “Very well.” He goes to the table and picks up the lube. He smears his hand with it and then joins Steve on the floor. “Go ahead, fuck my hand.”

“What?”

“I’m not doing the work, you’re getting off not me. You fuck my hand.”

A blush of red blossoms over Steve’s face and chest. He closes his eyes for a moment, but settles himself and shuffles closer to Tony. Tony encircles his erection with his fist and it softens a bit. When Steve goes to put his hands on Tony’s shoulders, Tony responds, “No, hands behind your back or I will bind them.”

Steve shifts his hands to clasps them behind his back. He positions himself and begins to thrust, but they are halfhearted and his erection has softened considerably. Tony tightens his grip, tries to urge him on with a squeeze but it fails and Steve mutters a curse. His cheeks are bright and burning as he moves but looks away from Tony. 

Hissing, Steve tries again but he’s not finding a rhythm. Tony reaches out and places a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Babe, you can do this for me.”

A little more encouragement and Steve huffs into it, laboring harder as he grows firmer in Tony’s grasp. Steve grunts as he shifts and tries to hit the calluses of Tony’s palm and hand to create a better friction. Just as Steve’s found the right pressure, the perfect amount of friction and sensation, Tony loosens his grip. Steve groans and falters in his pace. 

“Fuck,” Steve mumbles and grapples but remembers at the last minute to place his hands behind his back again. “Tony, please.”

“Please what?”

“Please,” Steve says and grinds his teeth. He’s sweating, the heat of it roiling off him in waves. 

Once, long ago, they worked on a system where Tony could say a few key words to cause Steve to orgasm without a hand on him. Tony wonders if it still works. He removes his hand as Steve finds his rhythm again. He stutters and cries out his disapproval.

“Is that bad,” Tony says and it almost sounds mocking, even to him. He folds his hands over Steve’s neck and leans in close to say, “My heart, my heart, my heart.”

It works, and it does so profoundly that Steve seizes into a full body shudder as he orgasms, collapsing into Tony and sobs out his dismay. It isn’t as pleasurable or as satisfying as he hoped, but it flows over him like an avalanche, tearing him apart, shredding his identity as Tony meant to do. He knows that the day caused too much of the Captain to come back into their life. He knows that Steve came here to forget the responsibilities, to release and relinquish the life of being an icon and hero. Tearing Steve apart is central to their interaction and play. 

When he completes his climax he pants and struggles to sit up. Tony wipes his hand on the blankets and then clasps it against the side of Steve’s face and kisses him, taking his time to explore and allow the feel and smell and sweat of the man to encompass him. When he breaks away from Steve they are both out of breath and using each other for support. 

“We’re going to work up to the chair,” Tony says. “What I want to know is how you would like to do that?”

“Not sure what you’re asking,” Steve says and settles against Tony as he pets his hands down Steve’s flank, paying attention to his nipples and running hands over his half hard cock. 

“The chair provides a lot of different scenarios. We can go for endurance, or pain/pleasure, or binding, lots of different things.”

“Does it have to be one or the other or can we combine them?” Steve asks.

“We can combine some of them, sure.”

“Okay,” Steve says and he’s uncertain, hesitant. Tony cannot tell if it is because he’s indecisive or if he’s fearful of the consequences.

“Do you want me to start it off for you?” Tony asks.

“Yes, that would be good,” Steve answers and exhales his relief. 

“Then how do we ask?” Tony says as he caresses the side of Steve’s face.

“Please, my liege?” Steve lowers his eyes and waits.

Kissing his temple, Tony stands up and goes to the table. He has a variety of toys as well as some tools. There’s ample variety, but he decides he’ll start fairly simple. “Come to the table in the corner. You’ll need to lean against it. Face it.”

“Grip the edge of the table and spread your legs.” Tony takes out the spreader bar. As he straps it around Steve’s ankles he explains. “We’re going to go with a little endurance and some pain. I want you to be prepared for the chair when we get to it.”

He attaches the spreader bar and then says, “I’m going to put on a ball stretcher with weighs. We haven’t done this before, if you don’t like it or it gets too uncomfortable tell me yellow or red immediately.”

Steve bows his head and watches as Tony pushes his sac through the rubber material. “This is a parachute ball stretcher. It allows me to add weighs to the chain forcing your balls lower. When you climax, if you can climax with it on, it will cause considerable sensation from what I understand.” 

“Okay,” Steve says through gritted teeth as Tony hangs the first weight on it delicately. 

“Tell me, how does it feel?”

“Like I’m wrung out,” Steve says through his teeth. He’s huffing and impossibly hard, leaking as he stands there spread out with a pendulum hanging from his balls. 

“I’m going to do a little impact play, can you handle that?” Tony says and hopes to hell Steve says yes. Looking at him, besieged and bleeding precome down his straight cock sends coils of hunger into Tony’s belly and he’s suddenly all too aware that he’s still fully dressed. It’s hard to believe less than an hour ago he was freezing cold. 

“Please, my liege, please.”

Tony choses the wooden paddle, it’s swift and hard. It will do damage but not permanently, though it is a good match for a super soldier. He tests it in his hands a few times, and then, without warning, swings. He hits the top of Steve’s left cheek and he goes to his toes, clenching onto the table edge with white knuckles prominent. The weight sways and Steve hitches and muffles his cry.

“Again?”

“Yes, my liege.” With his words, Steve has to physically restrain himself from a full body shuddering roll. “Please, please.”

This time, Tony smacks him thrice on the ass, leaving hot red marks and the ball weight hanging from the chain rocking in a wide arc. Steve’s juddering as he clutches the table, his cock a leaking mess. Tony suddenly hates his own clothes and drops the paddle to chuck them. It only takes seconds and then the paddle is back in his hands. He runs it along his stiff dick a few times, feeling the abrasion of it before slapping it hard against the rise of Steve’s ass twice more. 

“Breath, Babe, breath,” Tony says and places the paddle on the table again as he notices Steve hold his breath as he bends forward at the waist. Tony bends over him, chest to Steve’s back. “Breath for me.”

Steve nods but doesn’t immediately comply. Eventually he exhales hard and his balls clench against the stretcher as Tony brushes a hand against them. He whines a bit and rolls on the balls of his feet. 

“Tony?” Steve says between pants.

“Yes?”

“I think, I think if you hit me a few more times, I could come.”

“Even with the weight?” Tony says, he’s doubtful. He sees a slight look of terror in Steve’s expression as if he wants to chance his climax yet at the same time is frightened of it.

“Yeah, please? Could you?” Steve says and he sounds desperate and hopeful and strung out all at once. 

Before he reaches for the paddle again, he runs his dick up along Steve’s crack a few times and it feels divine. But he holds back, right now is not about him. Stepping away, he takes out the paddle and smacks it against Steve’s ass three more times, leaving bright red welts. When he doesn’t come but edges close to it, Tony adds another good full arc swing and the ball weight mimics the angle swaying back and forth as Steve quakes and then comes with a howl. It rips out of him, a pain streaked with pleasure. 

Steve suffers through his climax for several seconds, barely able to breathe, before Tony discards the paddle entirely and choses to wrap Steve in his arms as the aftershocks quake through him. He runs his hands up and down Steve’s chest, tugging on his nipples and dragging his hand over his wet cock. Steve wheezes as if in some respiratory distress.

“Shh, shh, you did so good.” Tony says as Steve comes down from the high. “So good. Are you good, Babe, are you good?” 

As Steve settles, he throws his head back on Tony’s shoulder, breathing. “This is good, so good.”

Tony smiles. “Glad you liked it. Now, do you want more of this or do you think you could handle a little of the chair. Remember when I get you in the chair, it will be hands off.” 

“For how long?” Steve says as he turns into Tony’s neck, nuzzling.

“For however long it takes.” Tony pinches Steve’s nipples and shoves his dick up against Steve’s crack again. 

“What do you want to do?” Steve asks and he backs into Tony. He’s limbs and weight, and all Tony’s.

“The chair,” Tony says, kissing and licking at Steve’s throat. “I want you in the chair.”

“What about you?” Steve asks.

“I’m gonna get my fill, don’t you worry. After the chair uses you, I’m gonna fuck you silly,” Tony says and then disengages to kneel down and remove the spreader and stretcher. Steve hisses and grabs harder onto the table. He takes a moment to cradle Steve’s abused balls in his hands. “You want water or anything? Ice pack, we can take a break?”

Steve shakes his head and turns to stare down the chair as if it is an enemy. Standing up next to Steve, Tony runs his hands down his side, being caring and soft like brushing strokes of a feather. 

“I want you to want this, I don’t want it to be your enemy,” Tony says. He guides Steve to the chair. “Touch it.”

Steve looks at him with a dubious frown and places a hand on the headrest. His fingers sink into the material. Stunned, he peers up at Tony and then lines his fingers along the chair to the seat of it. “What is this?”

“I told you, it’s an intelligent metal. I designed and created it. It will form to you. It is both a metal and a polymer impregnated with sensors and an artificial intelligence. The metal supplies the skeletal structure while the manmade material responds to touch.”

“Like JARVIS?” Steve asks but never stops touching the chair. Tony knows how it feels like silk and the softest velvet. 

“Something like, but not quite. This takes commands, responds to requests as well as sensors. It’s programmable, but it won’t do certain things that would make it sentient. JARVIS is more sentient than this.” Tony lays a hand on top of Steve’s. “It will only hurt you in a good way.”

Steve licks his lips and rotates his shoulders as if he’s a soldier preparing for an offensive. “I think-.”

“We have other toys to play with,” Tony says. “We could just go back to the fire, rest for a while.” 

“No, I can do this,” Steve says and for some reason Tony thinks Steve states these words like they are his mantra. He can do it, even if he can’t. 

“You’re sure?”

“Let’s do this,” Steve says and sidles up to the chair. 

Not assured, Tony nonetheless takes his lead from Steve. “Okay, then, come around to the foot, you need to sit in the divot here and I’m going to strap you in. Are you okay with that?”

“I can break them?”

“Anytime,” Tony says and waits as Steve follows his orders, sitting at the small grooved area at the end of the seat of the chair. Tony presses a finger to his shoulder. “Lay back.”

Steve allows himself to be pushed backward and the chair responds, coming up to meet his back and then slowly lowering him down to a thirty degree angle. He looks surprised but holds back any expectations of the chair. Tony busies himself with pulling out the leg rests with their braces and tugging Steve into place on each of the extended foot rests. He goes to the side and pushes the arm rests out to near cruciform style. “Please.”

Steve follows orders and splays his arms outward. Tony ties him in with simple bindings that are a malleable metal. “You can slip out of these fairly easily without actually breaking them.” Tony shows him as he lifts Steve’s arm up the metal resists, but further and hard the metal slips away like fluid.

“Wow, that’s remarkable,” Steve says lifting his head to get a better view.

“Back down, please,” Tony says and pets a gentle hand over Steve’s jaw and neckline. “I have a gag, but I know we haven’t tried it before. Would you like to try?”

“How will I safeword out?”

“Good thought,” Tony says. “Simply pull at the restraint, it will break away as you saw and you can remove the gag, or hit me, whichever.”

Steve smiles fondly at Tony. “I would never hit you.”

“That’s what they all say, now do you want the gag?”

“Let me see it?” 

Tony retrieves it from the table. It’s a small gag, it shouldn’t impede Steve’s breathing much at all. It is modeled after a dick and will lay nicely on his tongue and in his throat. When Steve sees it, his tongue drifts out of his mouth for a moment and he nods.

“We’re going for the world record of orgasms, right?” Tony says and moves down to Steve’s cock. “First, I’m going to prep you a bit.” From the drawer under the chair he digs out the lube and slips it onto a slim dildo. “This dildo is designed especially for your ass. It will slide in and then expand a bit.”

Tony watches Steve’s face as he glides the tapered tip of the dildo in through the ring muscle. Steve winces but bares down. Tony places a hand on his hip near his tight underbelly. “Let it in, come on Babe.”

He gets it into place and then turns on the vibration and expander. “This is something I designed especially for you. It will slowly expand and then we’ll work in the anal beads.”

“Anal beads?”

Tony shows him the line of beads on a polymer backbone they go from over five centimeters in diameter to less than a half centimeter. “How’s it going there?” Tony can tell Steve’s turned on, his once spent penis is standing at attention. 

“Feels good,” Steve says and he lays back as the chair accommodates him, subtly changing as he shifts and moves. 

“Now I’m going to expand it some more,” Tony says and drifts a hand over to Steve’s thigh. He touches the nib of the dildo and it begins to widen. 

“Oh,” Steve says and grimaces. “Oh, damn.”

“Good?”

“Yes, damn it, yes,” Steve says and tries to lift his hips off the chair but the way he’s buckled in doesn’t allow for much movement. He groans and his cock begins a steady drip. “Not enough, Tony, please.” He blinks several times as if trying to clear his head.

“Oh don’t do that, love,” Tony says and steps to the side of the chair. “You’re trying to stay out of subspace, sink in Babe, sink in and I’ll take care of everything. Now, open wide.”

Steve looks at him, long lashes flittering as he stares up at Tony. He opens his lips and Tony draws a line on them with his fingertip. “You are so beautiful.” For these moments, Tony forgets, lets his doubts and fears fall away. “Here you go.” He slides the gag in place, knowing it’s thin but long, bumping the back of Steve’s throat. As he does he says, “Incline head of chair to 40 degrees.”

The upper part of the chair shifts and the motor moves it to the requested angle while at the same time leaving the center of gravity to match Steve’s so that he doesn’t slide off. He rubs his hand down Steve’s side. “This way you can watch.”

Steve’s still adjusting to the feel of the gag with the dildo vibrating and expanded in his ass. Tony goes to his ass and slides the dildo out without a warning. Steve grunts in protest. Lifting the beads, he shows them to Steve and then begins to slide them in one by one, counting the ten beads as they disappear. Steve squirms in his seat and curls his toes. The sight of him strung out and needing to move, but not being able to seizes Tony hard and unforgiving like the glare of too much sun in his eyes. 

“Jesus,” he says and steps back to the table, clamps on a cockring of his own and then inhales a few times to balance himself. He goes back to attend his task as Steve strains against the chair and peers down at him.

“I’m going to attach the beads to this,” he says and gropes around near the side of the chair to produce a long white cylinder with wires attached to the side. “This is like a fuck machine, but it’s part of the chair. I’m going to let it milk you dry while it moves the beads in and out of your ass.”

With a bit of lube smeared into the tube and on Steve’s cock, Tony slips the cylinder of the chair’s fuck machine onto Steve. He attaches it to a belt like brace around Steve’s torso and then connects the wires to the anal beads. 

He flicks a switch and the arms of the chair are draw backward as the legs splay out. 

Before he starts the device, he asks, “Are we still green? One nod for yes.”

Steve nods once.

“Do you want to nod again for red?”

Steve shakes his head.

“How about yellow, do you want to go with yellow?” 

Steve shakes his head again. His eyes are bright and terrified but vibrant and alert, almost half crazed with anticipation. Tony turns on the chair’s fucking mechanism and the tube around Steve’s cock shimmies and strokes him as the anal beads begin to move, only slightly at the entrance to his ass. 

Steve throws his head back and groans as the chair works, but Tony knows it won’t be enough. He designed this part of it this way. He walks over to the table, gets out what he calls the nipple rod and turns it on. It will deliver the slightest jolt to the nipples. He’s not sure Steve will want to do this so he brings it to the chair and shows him.

“I’m going to give you a little shock on your nipples. It should be pleasurable. Do you want it?”

Half hysterical because he can’t get the right rhythm, he nods as Tony delivers the first jolt. He arches up into it and the cylinder clenches around him so that he moans and cries out around the gag. Tony repeats the process a few more times and each time the cylinder Steve’s fucking responds.

“Oh, if you didn’t get it yet, you control the chair’s mechanism with the gag in your mouth. The more you clench and suck, the better it will be for your cock and ass,” Tony says and steps away to watch the show. His own penis strains and dribbles as he absently strokes it to the motions of the tube sucking on Steve’s cock.

The chair lifts and adjusts moving to accommodate Steve’s motions, giving him the friction he desires as he fucks into the mechanism. The largest bead eases in and out of the tight ring muscle and Steve throws his head back as it does. Steve is making short work of the gag, sucking and biting at it. He goes into climax and spurts come all over his torso and chest. Tony follows the line of it, and then hits his nipples again with the shock treatment. It sends Steve into a dizzying array of contortions as he orgasms through it almost immediately after his last one.

Through the muffle of the gag, Steve begs him. It’s hard to understand but Tony gets the gist of it. “More?”

Steve nods.

Tony strikes him again with the probe, hitting his nipples until their red and raw looking and his body seizes up and he strains against his bindings. The juddering quakes of his body in full orgasm continues and the chair supports him throughout it. 

Checking on the anal beads, Tony sees the largest one has almost completely disappeared into Steve. It’s large, he’s stretched but Tony knows he can be stretched much farther. After his multiple orgasms, Steve’s tense and oversensitive but at the same time in need of something more, something different to hit the point of no return again. Tony steps up to Steve, right by his entrance and lowers the chair. He uses his stiff dick to hit Steve’s balls causing them to clench and spasm as Steve shoots again. When his dick hits the velvet firmness of Steve’s too stressed scrotum he nearly pitches over the edge himself. He’s lucky he still has the cockring on. 

Walking away again is entirely too hard but he forces himself to do it. He watches as Steve fucks himself, as he realizes Tony’s observing and his sweaty glistening skin turns a ruddy blush color. But he’s too far gone into it to stop and he keeps his eyes open as he thrusts his hips and the chair assists him. He groans as another orgasm over takes him, this one dry and painful. He doesn’t stop.

He keeps his eyes on Tony, almost in a trial. He shoves his hips further and sucks harder on the gag device in his mouth until he’s huffing and heaving and his body shudders with another orgasm. It is all he can do to keep his focus on Tony. He goes through another round, pushing the limits and tears are streaming down his face as he hits the peak again. 

Tony knows this is it, so he hurries over to the chair and the anal beads, disconnects them and as Steve hits his climax, pulls them free. He screams through it over the gag and it shatters every sense Tony has. Once he finishes, Tony unclamps the fucking tube from his spent penis. It looks sore and purple. 

He also pulls off the gag, and lightly kisses Steve’s eyes, and nose, and lips. “Color.”

In a hoarse voice, Steve murmurs, “Green.”

“I’m gonna fuck you now, color?”

“Green.”

He kisses him once again, long and lingering, trying to impart a sense of belonging and love. “I love you, you’re doing so good, Babe. So good.” He moves to the foot of the chair, unclasps his cockring, and lubes up. It doesn’t take much to slide right in and he grapples to stretch under the chair to the drawer to retrieve another dildo. He eases it along the length of Steve’s softened cock. He turns on the vibration as he thrusts into Steve.

Grunting Steve tries to pick up his head, but he’s too overwrought, too over the edge. He lies there pliant and moaning as Tony rocks into him. “Still so tight, so fucking tight, Babe. How do you do this to me?” 

He rides into Steve and keeps slapping against him, striking hard and firm and begging for more. He knows a way he can get more, like crawling into Steve, like becoming part of Steve, but that’s for another day, that’s the surprise in the closet. Rubbing the vibrating dildo against Steve’s cock as he struggles and cries out, Tony strokes him in time with his thrusts. 

“Please, Tony, please,” Steve mutters again and again.

“Please, what?” He’s barely holding on because his mind is blasted, there’s a hole in his brain, wide and open and filling with the light that is Steve. He cannot hold back, there’s nothing to shut away the force of it. 

“Please,” Steve says but doesn’t explain. Then in a quiet voice he whispers, “My liege.”

And Tony comes in a great rush, spilling into Steve, filling him, thick and hot and he forces it out and presses further until he can’t see, can’t hear, can’t feel anything other than the encompassing heat of Steve and then Steve’s spasming around him. His cock twitching in a last ditch effort to fulfill Tony’s demands and Steve’s throwing his head back and forth on the head rest, his eyes rolling, his mouth drooping. 

Riding out the waves of his orgasm, Tony falls forward over Steve and drops the dildo on the floor. He pants and tries to find some anchor some balance then he realizes Steve’s hand is on his head, petting his hair. He looks up to see that Steve’s broken past the bindings of the chair. 

“Babe,” Tony says.

“Hmm?” Steve answers but his eyes are too dilated, too glazed to focus on anything. 

“Chair lower to the floor,” Tony says and the chair descends to about a foot above the floor. Tony pushes the legs out straight and Steve winces as the motion. “Shush, Babe, I got you.” 

As he commands the binding mechanism to release, he rolls Steve off of the chair onto the carpet on the floor. It’s an easily washed carpet, so he’s not worried about the stains. He cradles Steve in his arms and stretches to set a bundle of pillows near them. Steve snuggles at his neck, then scoots down and laps at his nipples. “Babe?”

Steve wraps a leg around Tony and lays his head on his chest to hear his heartbeat. “I just want to feel you, be next to you.”

“Oh,” Tony says and worries the chair might have been too much. 

“Not what you think,” Steve says. “Loved it, just not enough of you.” He opens his hand and places it over Tony’s stomach, close to his groin. “Not enough touching.”

Tony runs his hand up and down Steve’s back. “Good to know, because what’s in the closet will solve all of that.” Tony doesn’t elaborate and is pleased when Steve trusts him enough not to ask, just nods and sighs against him. Steve’s warm breath tingles against his too hot flesh.

“Are you hungry?”

“Hmm, starved.” 

“Really?”

“Hmm, really,” Steve says but doesn’t move so that Tony can get him any food.

“How do you feel?”

“Achy, tired, raw,” Steve replies. “But good, good, away from myself.” He lazes against Tony and smiles. “Wish I could be like this all the time.”

“Oh that’s what all addicts say,” Tony says and is sorry as soon as it leaves his mouth. Steve doesn’t react to it, just hums lightly against Tony. He shifts the conversation a little. “What hurts?”

“Balls alot, penis, nipples. Be okay,” Steve says and kisses Tony with a tender touch as if he’s anointing him. 

“I’m going to run a bath for you. You need to soak out the soreness, then I am going to get something for us to eat,” Tony says and has to finagle out of Steve’s grasp to get to the bathroom. He starts the water and throws in some soothing bath salts. When he returns he finds Steve with the anal beads in his hands. “Shit.”

“What?” 

“Count them, you always count them to make sure they all came out,” Tony says.

“Six, seven, - ten,” Steve says and plops them in Tony’s waiting hand. “All good?”

“Yep, all good. Do you think you can make it to the bath while I start the food?” Tony scoops up his boxers. 

“Hmm.” Steve doesn’t move, just sits there.

“Okay, let’s get you in the bath,” Tony says and catches Steve’s elbow to bring him to his feet. Leading Steve to the bath, he ushers him to the tub, gets him settled and turns off the water. “Rest, I’ll be right back.”

“Good.”

He pauses and checks once more before he exits the bathroom, and then he passes through the playroom, glancing once at the chair and then back at the closet. He needs to clean up. There are protocols to keep things nice and fresh, but, for now, he stops at the closet. Putting his hand on the door, he bows his head. There are two ways this could go, beautifully or horribly. There are two surprises in the closet. He wonders which is the beauty and which is the horror.

Beauty or horror.

He looks over his shoulder at the chair and, for an instant, it reminds him of a device to torture not to provide pleasure and he’s squeamish and swallows down the bile. Maybe it isn’t about beauty at all, maybe it is all horror, maybe they’re just fooling themselves.

He hurries out of the room, escaping it to go about pretending they are a normal domestic couple. Tony can pretend, he’s good at that. He’s good at avoiding the unavoidable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't usually do this, but if you can, please tell me if this worked for you? I'm very unsure of this chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

On the couch, Steve sits with his legs bent up and his sketch pad propped up against his knees. He draws but doesn’t look up, so Tony can only assume he’s working on something from memory. After cleaning and massaging all of Steve’s aches away, Tony told Steve he should dress. Even though there was a protest or two, Steve trudged upstairs and pulled on a tank t-shirt and long running pants that puddled on the floor when he walked around barefoot. Where he found pants to fit him like that is a mystery.

Tony had tried to prepare a decent lunch, but he was defeated and had to surrender to the fact he is not a good cook. Steve shooed him away and made them grill cheese sandwiches with tomato basil soup. They’d eaten in silence with Steve notched close at the table to Tony. He couldn’t have Steve kneeling at his feet, considering the fare, but he still wanted him close. 

Dinner is fast approaching and Tony needs to figure out what he should do. The snow hasn’t let up and when he checks his tablet the weather experts are clear that they are in the middle of the first great blizzard of the season. No take out or delivery tonight. Eventually after hanging out in the kitchen and searching ingredients, Tony decides that he might not be a superhero when it comes to cooking. He ends up ensconced in a chair at the fireplace.

All of the toys from the room are currently in the dishwashing being cleaned and he used the carpet steamer to clean up – or rather Steve did. He pulled a fourth bead on that one; told Steve it was for his pleasure and he needed to clean up. Steve set about doing it without complaint, but Tony still feels antsy about it.

Maybe he’s not up to being a dom?

He sighs as he pages through his tablet for the latest technical reports he needs to review. 

Steve marches over to the fireplace checks the wood and announces, “I’m going to chop some more wood for the fire. I noticed a heap of it that needs to be split around back.”

Tony can hear the winds even through the stone walls of the cottage. “Hmm, you think that’s a good idea?”

“Yeah, yeah I do. I need to get out of here,” Steve says and climbs up the stairs to get properly dressed. Tony turns over the words in his head and can’t get past the phrase – get out of here.

Before Tony can ask any questions, Steve’s back; outfitted for the weather he tugs on his gloves. “I put a load of laundry in. All you need to do is start the machine once the dishwasher is finished. You do know how to start the machine?”

“Yes, but I thought we didn’t have detergent?” Tony says and feels small, helpless, stupid. He hates feeling stupid. 

“I found some under the sink in the kitchen, while I was doing the dishes from lunch,” Steve says. Steve ties on his boots, and then opens the door. The cold rushes. “I’ll be back later.” He slams the door behind him and leaves Tony staring into a funnel of confusion. 

After a moment’s pause, he walks over to the sink and digs out the small container of laundry detergent. The management company he hired to outfit most of the rooms and decorate must have added this as well. He shrugs and puts it on the counter. In the distance he can hear the chop of an ax as Steve starts his work.

Determined not to be upset by Steve’s words, Tony tries to decide what should be for dinner. He notices a large crockpot sitting on the counter. Going over to it, he picks up the lid and sees that Steve’s already started chili. While Tony should be pleased, he’s less than happy about it. The chili is fine, it’s the lack of confidence in Tony’s ability to take care of him that hurts.

“Okay, stop it, you had a great time this afternoon,” Tony mutters to himself. Why does he doubt it though? Steve came multiple times. It was fun, relaxing. Then why is Steve outside during a snowstorm beating the crap out of wood?

Tony retrieves his phone and ends up sitting on the bed upstairs as he presses the connect button. He tries Pepper but she’s not answering, neither is Rhodey or Sam for that matter. Cringing, he hits the connect button and finally someone answers.

“Stark?”

“Natasha?” Tony says and he hates, absolutely loathes feeling insecure in front of her.

“How’s Steve?” she asks. She never was one to beat around the bush, unless of course she’s busy spying on you.

“He’s good, he’s fine. No,” Tony says and releases the tension. “No, he’s not good at all.”

He hears her settle into the conversation. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s pissed at me right now, I don’t know why,” Tony says. “We had a great afternoon.”

“Of sex,” she states and Tony wonders if she has the placed bugged and under video surveillance. 

“Hmm?”

“It isn’t that hard to guess, Stark,” Natasha says and he can almost hear the play of a smile on her lips. “Take it from me sex is a great numbing agent. It works wonderfully so you don’t have to feel anything, it seduces you into thinking everything is all right, but in the end you have to come back to reality and yourself. Once you do-.”

“It isn’t good,” Tony says and feels the ache in his chest amplify. 

“Listen, Steve’s had a rough time of it,” Natasha says. “He won’t admit it, but a lot of his beliefs were destroyed. He built his new life here based on certain truths. Some of those truths broke down, especially with the reappearance of Barnes.”

He doesn’t want to ask it, but he does anyhow. “Does he want Barnes back?”

“Of course he does,” Natasha says and it stabs ice into his chest. “If you mean as a significant other, as a lover, I don’t know. But he wants Barnes in his life. Steve’s spent the better part of his life knowing that he had a mission, that his mission was to make things better.”

“So he wants to save Barnes?”

“More or less,” Natasha says. “You might think he’s only playing with you, but he doesn’t play. Steve’s not like that.”

“But maybe he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings?” 

She doesn’t immediately answer and it worries Tony. “I can’t say for sure. But I know when we went in we expected to find a small cell of Hydra wannabes. What we ended up finding went straight to the top. Everything in his world has been stripped away twice in as many years for him. Maybe-.”

“Maybe he needs some foundation,” Tony says and realizes he’s been thinking of Steve all wrong these last few days. Steve doesn’t need to be broken down because he’s already fragmented with only spit and wishes holding him together. “He needs-.”

“He needs you to show him he’s worth it.”

“Worth it?” That throws him.

“What happened with Barnes, he gave up. You know the stories, Captain America never gives up. He dropped his shield, he surrendered. Why do you think that is?” She lets the question hang and doesn’t answer it.

He cannot find the correct answer. He loves Barnes, he would never hurt someone he loves. He said it earlier today. He would never hit Tony. “Okay, okay. I get it.” But he doubts he truly does. “Thanks, Natasha.”

“Say hello to Steve for me.”

“I will, say hi to Barton,” Tony says and cuts the connection. He sits in the twilight of the day in the bedroom listening to the hacking of the ax against wood outside. 

He needs to find a better way, he needs to pick up the shattered remains of Steve and piece him back together again. Pocketing his phone, he jogs down the stairs and goes to the door. But Steve’s still chopping wood, and it’s possible he needs the space to think. He drifts to the drawing pad and looks over to the window. Steve’s busy and he left the pad right here. 

Picking it up, he flips through the pages. Most of the studies are drafts of people Tony doesn’t know. There’s one of Natasha, and another of Sam. He’s surprised by how many there are of him, but what stops him is the ones of Barnes. They are the most complete, as if Steve needed to work something out of his system, as if touching these charcoaled lines might bring back the lost and missing. The last piece – is telling. It is only of a metal arm. The metal arm of the Winter Soldier. The precision of his work and the long smear down the bicep puts him out of sorts. Tony has it all wrong.

“Okay, then,” Tony says and goes back to the recliner near the fireplace. He throws another log on and settles into a chair with his tablet and the technical reviews opened. Right now, Steve needs his space. He shouldn’t go after Steve, he shouldn’t harass him. He needs the space and time to come to a resolution in his own head before Tony messes around with it. “Done enough damage as it is.” He’s heard of subdrop, or the theory of it, but he’s not sure exactly how to handle it. He’s fairly certain he’ll crap things up more, rather than trying he decides it might be better to allow Steve the time to work things out in his head.

When the light in the room fades and he blinks to realize that it isn’t only dark but it’s pretty much night, Tony jumps up. He read through the entire review, and more. He got lost in his own head. “Damn it, what the hell time is it?” He hits the tablet. It’s after eight. “Steve?” He calls out again, hoping Steve might be upstairs in the bath. “Steve?”

He hears it then, the telltale sound of an ax against wood. “Still? There couldn’t have been that much wood out there.” He descends the staircase and, lurking in the dark, the fear tingles through him. He should have followed Steve, he should have dragged him back in the house hours ago.

He flicks on the back porch light, and steps out onto the snow covered stone patio. In the halo of light from the house, Tony spots Steve. He’s stripped of his coat and gloves and scarf. He wears his tank shirt and his pants with boots, and he’s dripping wet from sweat. Around him all the logs have been split and re-split. There’s a tree on its side, obviously only downed within the last day and Steve’s swinging the ax at it. His singular focus almost manic in its fury.

Tony pushes through the snow, ignoring the cold and the bitter winds. “Steve?”

Steve doesn’t turn around right away, he’s hacking at the tree limbs with the ax. His swing is precise and timed, but brutal and telling. He keeps working as Tony calls to him again.

“Steve, come on, you’ve been out here for hours. It’s night and you haven’t eat-.”

“Go back inside, Tony,” Steve says and his tone is more than a challenge, it’s a warning.

“No,” Tony says. “Get inside, it’s freezing out and you’ve been out here-.”

Steve turns around and in the pool of light from the porch, Tony sees a dangerous light in his gaze, in his demeanor. “Go back inside. I’ll come in when I’m done.”

“You’re done,” Tony says, not at all sure if he’s up to a challenge let alone a threat from a super soldier.

Steve tosses the ax like it’s a toy and marches through the snow, a look of defiance and danger in his expression. “Oh I’m done all right, I’m completely done.”

As he approaches, Tony shies back and Steve laughs, mockingly and unkind. It drills down to Tony’s core, skewers it out and burns it away. “Steve.” His voice sounds tiny even to himself.

Steve ignores him and enters the cottage. Tony inhales; the air is more than cold, it’s frigid and painful to breathe. He wonders if it is the situation or the wind chill. Following Steve, Tony wishes instead of reading about the latest technical designs for brain to computer interfaces he’d actually taken the time to read more about subdrop, what it means, how he could handle it. If this is the result of it.

“I suppose you’re waiting for dinner?” Steve says. 

“I don’t, that’s not why I went out there,” Tony says and slams the door shut, latching it. 

“Oh really,” Steve says and shakes his head. “What’d you come out for? Need a quicky blow job?” Steve strides across the room and goes to his knees in one graceful motion. “Let me do that for you.” He reaches up to unzip Tony’s jeans.

“Christ, no,” Tony says and bats his hands away. “Get the hell up. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I suppose it was too much to ask for you to understand,” Steve says, climbing to his feet, and muffles the rest of his reply. 

“I can’t understand anything unless you tell me what’s going on,” Tony says. “You seemed to like what we did. You seemed to enjoy yourself.”

Steve looks everywhere but at Tony. Instead of staying for the confrontation, he storms off to the kitchen. He busies himself with getting dinner prepared. “I asked you for only a few things when I came here, Tony.”

He can’t actually remember anything Steve asked for, and he’s ashamed of that fact. He keeps quiet.

“I wanted you to take care of me, to feed me and to-.”

“Listen, sure I can feed you but shit, Babe, I can’t cook for beans. I mean the steaks yesterday were stretching it.” Tony needs to appeal to his better senses. This is Steve, he’ll understand.

But he doesn’t.

He laughs, joyless and painful. “Yeah, I got that. You squirmed out of that one, too.”

“Steve.”

“What, Tony? What is it? Why are you here? Why are we here?” In his voice there’s a near hysteria. “Is this all we are? This?” He opens the dishwasher and the sparkling clean sex toys are laid out on the top rack. “This is what we’re about, isn’t it? This is it? What happened to the dreams? What happened to us? Remember when you wanted to build something more? Remember when this was something more?”

“It is, Babe, it is,” Tony pleads but he’s not sure what he should say or do. How he should have approach the unapproachable. This is so much more than subdrop, this is a relationship explosion. “I’m trying, I am.”

Steve blows a heavy breath out, holding onto the counter as he does. “Maybe we were apart too long. Maybe we just can’t be together anymore. It isn’t like this is a road trip or a night in Vegas or days on the Island. You don’t have your distractions, and I have nothing left of me.”

Steve begins to leave the kitchen but Tony catches him. “What? What did you say?”

“You heard what I said, this was a mistake, Tony. I’m sorry, but everything that’s happened has torn what we had apart. There’s nothing left but scenes and this,” Steve says and leans down, fumbles with his sock, and tears off the anklet, the four beads fly loose and ping off the wood floor. 

“No, no, that is not it,” Tony tries to explain but the words collide in his head with the self doubt and fear. There’s no way he can put it back together again because the parts are missing and he’s a bundle of shattered pieces. “No, we’re more than that.”

“Then tell me,” Steve says, searching his face. “Tell me what we’re doing here?”

“Reconnecting,” Tony says and it feels trite and stupid and something that Dr. Phil might say.

Steve calls him on it. “Sure, Tony, that’s great.” He looks defeated and the last thing that Tony wants to admit is that he caused the look of defeat on Captain America’s face.

“It’s more,” he says and doesn’t know how to go on. Doesn’t know what else he wants to say.

“More?” Steve says. “You haven’t even-.” Steve shifts his eyes upward and Tony glimpses the glint of tears. He controls it and then looks back at Tony. “You never even asked.”

He should be kind, he should be understanding, but this relationship or whatever the hell it is that they have is a two way street. “What did you want me to say? How did you want me to ask? I did what I knew, what I could to make you feel comfortable and loved. I love you, I don’t get why that isn’t enough.”

“Love me?” Steve says. “But you don’t care about me. You love the scene, you love the challenge, the puzzle, the experiment of this lifestyle. I’m not so sure you love me.”

“Don’t you dare,” Tony spits back at him. “Don’t you dare tell me how I fucking feel, Steve Rogers.” He stalks off to the playroom, throws open the closet, and digs out the one precious gift he wanted to give to Steve. When he returns to the kitchen Steve offers him a cold stone expression. “You think it’s about playing and sex, but it isn’t. I died, I fucking died when you went off to rejoin SHIELD. I went out of my mind. I couldn’t deal with it.

“Then when I saw what happened in D.C., I nearly fucking had a heart attack. They showed a captured video on youtube, all the damned news stations picked it up. They showed the helicarriers exploding and all I could think was that you were on it. You.”

Before Steve responds, Tony says, “And don’t tell me, don’t fucking tell me that you wanted to save Barnes. Because I found out what you did, Wilson told me what you did, because you confessed it to him and _not to me_. You fucking gave up. Captain America, Steve Rogers, gave up. You dropped your shield. Did you even think what it would do to the people who love you, today, now, this moment, when you did that?

“No, you only cared about him, about yesterday. He’s not your today, he’s not your tomorrow, I am,” Tony says and whips the box at Steve. “I’m your tomorrow, god damn it.”

The box strikes Steve in the chest and falls to the floor and pops open. The ring clatters out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author runs away after posting chapter .....sorry.....


	7. Chapter 7

Tony stares at the glittering band of gold on the floor, the thing between them, like it’s a bomb or a grenade. He half expects Steve to fling himself onto it, to conceal it and protect them from it. Isn’t that what all the movies said about Captain America? He’d throw himself on a live grenade to save the innocent. He thinks someone needs to save them now. But who between them is innocent?

Steve bends down and scoops up the ring. He straightens and turns the ring over in his grasp. All the while Tony suffocates on his fear, the terror of his big reveal. He’d planned everything out, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. The ring shouldn’t have been laying on the floor in the midst of the broken anklet and the lost beads. 

“Tony, I-.” Steve stops because his voice quavers. He shakes his head and walks out of the kitchen, never looking up, only gazing at the gold and silver band in the palm of his hand. 

Tony follows like a lamb to the slaughter, stupidly innocent of what’s to become of him. 

Crumpling, Steve falls to his knees next to the fire and sits unmoving and silent. His shoulders quake and he hasn’t looked up at Tony since he picked up the ring. The ring looks too small in his large powerful hands. Tony stands there, with his own hands empty and feels all the more powerless and deflated. 

“I’m sorry.” It’s the only thing he can think to say, though he’s no idea what he might be actually apologizing for, or if Steve even needs him to apologize.

Steve swallows and glances up at Tony. The glistening of tears evolves into streaks, quiet and powerful. Tony drops next to Steve, and gathers him to his chest, cupping a hand to the back of his neck, knowing no words to help him through his agony. He holds him there, near the fire, near light and warmth and feels the coldness in his heart. He betrayed Steve’s trust, his needs. He allowed his mind, his brilliant mind to be clouded. He betrayed them both.

“Tell me,” Tony says and keeps his tone level, rational. Right now, he keeps his own emotions at bay.

He breaks away, but doesn’t move from Tony’s arms. Steve turns the ring around, looking at the bands of gold and silver entwined, the glitter of the diamonds within the band. “What is there to tell?”

“Tell me why?” Tony says and bows his head a little so that he can glimpse the expression, ruined and forlorn on Steve’s face.

“Why? I don’t know why, all I know is that having him come back-.” He stops, clears his throat and looks as if he might try and escape the path. But Tony places a hand on his knee, steadying him. He begins again. “When I first, when everything went down, we thought it was a nascent cell, a strange Hydra wannabe that had been stalking us all those months.”

“Yes.”

“Then when Natasha and I found out it was actually Hydra, really Hydra infiltrating SHIELD to the highest level, all I could think was, I was,” He pauses and sniffles. “All I could think was I was glad they thought we were done. That we weren’t the Avengers anymore, that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers weren’t talking. I wanted to protect you.”

“I get that,” Tony says because he’d once wanted the same thing for Pepper, once upon a time. In some ways, he still does and knows that Steve would respect that.

“Then, then he showed up, Bucky.” The words fall out like daggers, like spikes meant to kill. “Bucky, who I loved, love, loved. Bucky who meant the world to me. Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.”

“Steve,” Tony says and keeps his hand on Steve’s nape, massaging it, trying to anchor him. 

“But he didn’t know me, he tried,” Steve says and frowns. “I’m sorry, Tony, but I have to try and find him.”

It hurts, Tony admits it to himself. He can’t deny the caved in heart he has, the holes peppering his soul down to his core. “Yeah, I figured as much.”

“I need to find him. What he’s been through, what happened to him.” Steve shakes his head as he closes his eyes. “It’s a nightmare.”

He can concede this point, even though there’s an irrational part of him that hopes that Bucky keeps running farther and farther away from Steve, so far away that Steve can never find him. 

Sitting here with Steve wrapped in his arms, with Steve holding the ring that Tony had hoped to present to him at a special moment – a moment he’d planned for months – sitting here with Steve talking about Bucky jabs at Tony. Like a javelin it rips him open but he holds back the fears and the pain as Steve continues.

“Everything’s been rough, I know that,” Steve is saying and he moves slightly away from Tony, facing toward the fire as if he’s watching something, reliving something. “I know you tried, are trying. I know, but-.” He fists his hand with the ring in it. “But I’m not sure why you would want to give this to me.

He swallows down the hurt and says, “I’m not sure what you’re saying?”

Steve runs a hand over his face, as if he’s holding onto the world but only barely. He’s insubstantial, he’s fragmented – and Tony realizes this isn’t what Steve is projecting but how Tony sees him, right now, today. He’s not part of Tony’s world, and he wonders if Steve ever was – or will be.

“I don’t know myself,” Steve says. He inhales and then puffs out a breath in a heavy stream. “Let me explain it this way, it’s hard to be here, to be in this present, because it isn’t mine.”

“It is,” Tony says and he knows he’s interrupting but he’s doing it because he doesn’t want to hear the rest, he wants to run away from it all. “We’ve been together for a long time, now, Steve.” He grasps the hand Steve has the ring gripped in. “We can make a future together.”

Shaking his head, Steve says, “I- we- we haven’t been together that long, Tony. You said it yourself, we’ve been apart most of the time we’ve been together.”

“And you think Bucky would be better for you? You think someone like that, someone-.”

“Who shares my same life experiences,” Steve says and he pulls his hand away from Tony.

Standing up, he goes to the window, where the porch light illuminates the crystalline glitter of the snow. It’s stopped, now, the storm has settled into that heavy blanket of winter as if telling the world to sleep. Tony stays on the floor for a moment, watching Steve, seeing him in the halo of light from outside. He’s different, strong and firm and heroic. But it occurs to Tony that, in fact, Steve will always be that 90 pound sickly man with asthma and a need to prove to the world he deserves more than what life gave him.

“Your life experiences are different by seventy years now,” Tony whispers and Steve turns around to face him. He can’t make out but shadows throw over his face to see his expression. “Over the past few years your life has been about the Avengers, SHIELD, and me. Would he get who you are now? Would anyone?” Tony climbs to his feet and his pants are wet from the snow, but he doesn’t care. “What are you looking for that you can’t find it in me? What am I missing?”

Steve looks over his shoulder into the winter snows and then back at Tony. The lamp light offers a glimpse of a melancholy smile and Steve bows his head. He looks at the ring. “You’ve given me everything I’ve asked for, Tony. Everything.”

“But it isn’t enough, is it?”

He reaches over and places the ring on the table near the recliner where they’d first christened the house. “I’m not sure. I just don’t know.” He walks to the stairs but before he can escape, Tony stops him.

“Do you love him?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does.”

“If it would make things easier, do you want me to say yes?” Steve says and a wrecked look shifts over his face until he buries it.

“I want the truth.”

Steve holds onto the newel post as if he needs the support. “I watched him die, I watched him fall. It’s been with me every day since. He’d been my friend for years before, before, anything happened between us. I’m not even sure he just didn’t want the support and wasn’t looking for something long term. When you’re facing death every day, you kind of hold onto what you got as precious, you know.”

Tony nods and he thinks about how precious Steve is to him.

“I don’t know if I love him in that way, I think I did, or do. I don’t know if he loved me in any other way but what we were to each other,” Steve says. “I can’t do this to you, Tony. Don’t ask me to.”

“Do what?”

“I can’t break your heart. Please, just give me some time, I need some time. I don’t want to break your heart.”

He disappears up the stairs and Tony drifts over to the ring sitting on the table. He picks it up and whispers, “You just did.”

It might be hours later when he moves again. He puts away the chili without tasting it. He’s assuming that Steve’s holed up in the bedroom and not coming down. It isn’t like they can leave; the roads are blocked with snow. He listens to the wind batter the trees outside and throws another log on the fire.

Eventually, he curls up on the recliner. Even his tablet holds nothing interesting for him. He wonders if he should call someone; ask for help, at least an evacuation so that Steve doesn’t have to see him again. He needs to consider transportation, one way or another considering the SUV is totaled on the side of the road. He spends some time sending information to the local towing company (it’s surprisingly hard to find a towing company that has webpage in backward USA). He turns his attention to the situation of transportation and finally concedes to sending JARVIS a message to arrange for a car to be delivered at the earliest possible time with some notes on the weather. With little else to do, and no sounds coming from upstairs, Tony retrieves a throw from the couch, cuddles up on the recline and somehow finds sleep.

When he awakes it is to what can only be described as an unnatural howl rattling the house. He jumps up and his tablet clatters to the floor. Looking around in the dark, he fumbles his way to the light switch and hits it. The glow of yellow light pools around him and he scans the room. It’s quiet and undisturbed. He scratches at the sleep still in his eyes and presses the heels of his hands into his sockets to try and orient himself.

He must have dreamed it. He finds his way across the room into the playroom, ignoring the chair that seems more like a traitor than anything else now. Going to the bathroom, he quickly finishes up and then thinks about whether he should shower when he hears another screech. He startles and washes his hands to race to the stairs.

“Steve?”

Rushing up the stairs he swings open the door to see Steve balled up on the bed, hand cupped over his face, and his exposed shoulder shivering. Not knowing if he’s welcome or not, Tony takes the initiative and approaches. He knees onto the bed and reaches over to lay a hand on Steve’s arm.

His hand drops away and Steve looks up at him, his expression a war of emotions from grief to despair to terror. With nothing to offer, Tony whispers, “What is it?” Steve tries to move away, but Tony holds fast. “What, Steve?”

“I woke you,” Steve states as if he’s figuring out the sequence of events, as if this is a moment in time he’s trying to place. Tony recalls the house on Lake Chautauqua and how Steve drew all over the walls in the room with events and pictures of the day to remind him where and when he was anytime he would awaken disoriented.

“Don’t worry about it, I had to get up and pee anyhow,” Tony says. “You’re here with me, now. It’s okay. Bad dreams?” He feels like a fool asking a grown man if he’s being chased by monsters at night.

Steve collapses in on himself and covers his face with both hands. “Yeah, you could say that.”

Tony waits him out, he feels like he’s intruding, but at the same time he knows he’s needed here, by Steve’s side. It takes long moments before Steve looks up and with hands folded in his lap says, “Everything’s really a mess isn’t it?”

“You could say that, or you could say we’re confronted by an interesting challenge,” Tony says.

“An interesting challenge?”

Tony waves him off. “A professor of mine used to say that at MIT. Any time we had a difficult equation to solve he’d say, is this a problem or have we been confronted by an interesting challenge?” Tony chuckles. “And he always said it like he was Elmer J. Fudd.” 

“Who?” Steve says as he squints his eyes. In the soft light of the moon, they looks tired, worn, decades old.

“No bother, put it on the list. Hey you want that chili now?” Tony says and thinks he’s lost his mind. He blew his proposal, Steve essentially said no, and now he’s offering him chili. 

“Hmm,” Steve hedges and there’s a desolate look in his eyes like the images from his dreams haunt him.

“I got Cheetos,” Tony says.

Steve laughs, it is genuine and rich. “Sure, Tony, I am a little hungry.”

He doesn’t mention how a super soldier spent the better part of three hours or more chopping wood and then went to bed without eating. All he does is offer his hand and Steve grasps it. He leads him out of the bedroom, and downstairs. Settling Steve on the couch, he grabs the blanket and tucks it in. Steve smiles and his cheeks warm to a nice rose hue.

“What?”

“You’re, you’re just really being sweet,” Steve says.

“Well keep it to yourself, don’t need to have everyone know I’m not an asshole one hundred percent of the time,” Tony says and leaves before he catches Steve’s expression. He curses himself. He needs to stop being passive aggressive, he needs to talk to Steve, tell him how he feels. But as he prepares the snack for Steve, he knows he can never do that, he can never tell Steve how he feels again.

Steve’s made it perfectly clear he’s on a different path now. Tony lost his chance. He warms up the chili, gets some bread, cheese, and even the promised Cheetos and places everything on a fold-out tray. Finally he finds some beer in the fridge and pops it to add to the tray. Loaded up, he brings the tray for Steve. 

He finds Steve sitting huddled in the blanket as if there’s no heat on in the cottage. He checks the thermostat and all seems well. He turns it up a few degrees anyhow. He sits a cushion away from Steve and says, “Eat.”

Steve picks at the food, even the Cheetos. 

“It’s too much isn’t it?”

“What? The food? No, no, it’s good.”

“No, I mean everything?” Tony circles his finger around as if to indicate the cottage but what he really means is all the things thrown at Steve in the last few years. “It’s all been a lot to handle, defrosting, alien invaders, me, the whole Hydra thing, and now Barnes.”

“Yeah, yeah, you could say that,” Steve says. “I feel dug out, like someone started digging and there’s a hole in my chest and no one’s noticed. It’s strange to feel so hollowed out.”

Tony reaches over and butters some of the bread for Steve. “No, no it isn’t.” He knows what it feels like. He’s literally felt exactly how Steve describes. 

“I wasn’t prepared,” Steve says and he cradles the beer bottle in his hands. “I thought I could take anything on. I was confident, assured. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t. I couldn’t deal with the truth.”

“What do you mean?” Tony’s not sure what to ask or do, but he’s certain he should keep Steve talking.

“I found out about Hydra’s total infiltration of SHIELD from Zola, or a facsimile of him or something weird like JARVIS only creepier.”

“JARVIS is not creepy.”

“In some ways, he is, Tony.” Steve glosses over his statement and continues. “I punched the computer screen, because I wasn’t prepared for the truth. It hurt too much. I was self-righteous in my attitude, in my death. I knew I did it for the right reasons and I saved the world for it, and it felt good and right.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“But I punched the screen because it was all a lie,” Steve says and puts the beer on the table with the half eaten chili. “I’ve treated you terribly.”

Surprised at the switch in topics, Tony stays mute.

“I came here and I was selfish. I wanted you to do what you’d done before for me. I didn’t think about you or what you wanted. I didn’t think of how my feelings, how everything that’s happened had consequences on us. Some strategist I am,” Steve laughs in a low mocking tone. 

“You’re human, or more or less,” Tony says with a small smile.

“Less, I think,” Steve says and he’s closing up, erecting walls, Tony can see it in the way his shoulders are straighter, firmer, rigid, how he holds his expression and keeps his eyes fixed.

“Don’t, don’t do that,” Tony says. He chances reaching out and clasping Steve’s hand. “It takes two to tango. I didn’t say what I wanted or anything. I was too excited to try and show you I could do something, this lifestyle that we forged, or tried to. I really thought I had it straight.”

“It’s been a rough couple of years.” 

“You can say that again,” Tony says and draws the infinity sign on the back of Steve’s hand.

“Do you think we both used one another as a crutch, a way to get through it? Maybe that’s all-.”

Tony stops his doodling and squeezes Steve’s hand. “I know that’s not what I was doing. And I think you’re not going to say you were just doing that either. I think we’re something more.” He doesn’t know if the ‘we’ is still present or past tense.

“Maybe,” Steve says and he looks off to the distance in a fond and kind way. “We have a lot of good memories.”

He hopes to hell they are better than the ones Steve shared with Barnes, but fighting a living ghost might be even too much for Iron Man. “Can we, can we try this again?”

“This?” And Steve’s glance skitters, jumps and follows it, to the abandoned ring. 

He backs away from that subject. “Our time here together. We can see if it’s something more than just a crutch. Can we try to be just us, for a few days?” He feels small and helpless as he asks.

But the smile Steve offers him is more than worth it. He drops his gaze for a moment and then back up at Tony. “Sure, I think we can try _that_.”

Tony doesn’t miss the subtle emphasis on the last word. He only swallows down his despair when Steve leans in and kisses him, tenderly, lovingly. He commits to memorizing the feel and taste, because it is a delicacy he won’t have for very long.


	8. Chapter 8

Over the course of the day, Tony feels the tension of the last hours leak from him. They both fall into a nice and quiet interaction, though Tony sometimes feels like he’s waiting for the next shoe to drop. He keeps telling himself that he wasn’t much better after the whole Mandarin thing. 

Even as the morning rises and Steve bundles up to go out and shovel, he stops a few times and asks Tony, “Is everything all right?”

Tony doesn’t mention the ring, doesn’t mention how empty he feels, he only nods and says, “Just trying to relax, Babe.” He ignores the look Steve gives him and turns back to his tablet. “Do you want me to come out and help?”

“No, that’s okay.”

When he hears the scrape of the shovel against the pavement, he sends a few emails. He gets JARVIS to remotely disable the interface to his artificial intelligence in the totaled SUV, and then he tells him to burn out all the circuits. That should be enough to protect his proprietary information. After, as he listens to the rhythmic work of Steve, he walks over to the back window to watch. 

Steve’s singular in purpose as he works, not easing or stopping for a moment to catch his breath. He took off his hat at some point and the sun, blinding with the reflected light from the snow, highlights his blonde hair to an almost honey gold color. He’s brilliant and beautiful. 

The holes in Tony’s heart, the ones that bore right down to his soul, seem worth it when he watches Steve. He shouldn’t leave him to do all the work. He should go out and help. He doesn’t have the right clothes but he bundles up with a sweater and a hoodie, digging through his belongings to pull out his one set of running shoes. His feet won’t get too wet if he sticks to the path Steve’s already worked on.

Finding an extra pair of gloves in Steve’s belongings, he pauses as his hand hits something solid in the clothes he’d stuffed into the drawer. Tony opens it wider and reaches it to grab it. Before he even pulls it out, he knows what it is. It’s familiar and hideous. In his hand he cradles an arc reactor. It isn’t his, it isn’t even real. It’s a toy reactor, one that the stores sell as Iron Man or Avenger gear. He flips it over and finds the on and off switch.

He slides it to the on position and realizes as he does it is a nightlight. It glitters in the room, but he cannot see the full effect. Moving to the closet, he steps inside and smiles. It changes colors from red to yellow to blue and purple. It’s pretty, almost soothing. When he exits the closet, Steve is standing there, his face red from the outside.

“Oh,” he says and if it was possible, he goes a bit redder as he reaches for the nightlight. 

Tony surrenders it. “Sorry, I wasn’t snooping or anything.” He must sound like a horrible liar. They had a monumental fight and now he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I was looking for gloves.”

“Gloves?” Steve says and, almost reverently, places the little fake arc reactor on the bed table. 

“I wanted to,” Tony says and the flush of blood goes to his cheeks. “I wanted to help you out.” He points to the outside like it might explain his red hot lies.

Steve only nods and taps the arc reactor twice, the lights go out. “Okay.” He waits a few seconds and then says, “I needed it sometimes, you know. It might sound stupid and everything, but it helped. We were apart for so long and couldn’t talk, much. I-this was a way to feel connected with you. It’s stupid, I know, I must look like an ace-class fool.”

“No, no you don’t,” Tony says and crosses the room to grab each side of Steve’s face. He’s freezing but Tony doesn’t care. “That’s one of the most romantic things I’ve ever heard.” He dives in for a kiss, a real one this time, where he doesn’t worry about it being the last. It feels perfect and true and Steve has his hands on Tony’s hips, holding him close.

When they break apart, Steve says, “You don’t mind? I thought it might give you the creeps.”

“Geez, no, not at all,” Tony says.

“I’m glad,” Steve says and the wonder in his eyes sets off another round of furious and spectacular kissing. “Then I think I will challenge you to a snowball fight.”

“Wh-what? I thought we were kissing, getting a little romantic, maybe go sit by the fire and look longingly into each other’s eyes.”

“Maybe if we’re in a Bronte novel, but no thanks, I want to show you how to make a proper snowball,” Steve says and pulls out a pair of gloves. “You won’t last long with those shoes on.”

“Got nothing else.”

“Double socks, and baggies on your feet, that’ll help.” Steve starts to leave the room.

“Where are you going? We’re in the middle of kissing time,” Tony says.

Steve snickers and leans back in the room for a second. “I’m going to get my ammunition prepared.”  
“Hey now,” Tony says and races after him. When he finally gets outside after wrapping his feet in an extra pair of socks and putting baggies on them before stuffing them into his shoes, Steve is nowhere to be found.

He ducks around the side of the house, the snow piles up to his thighs in places and higher in other places where Steve shoveled. He follows the path around the house, grabbing up some snow to ball up. Just as he makes the back of the house from behind the felled tree a barrage of snowballs whip out at him. They slam with greedy precision and Tony screams, leaps backward and hides along the side of the house. 

He searches around and starts forming as many snowballs as possible. “You think you can take me? Super soldier? Ah! You forget I am a weapon’s manufacturer. Making weapons is in my blood.” He quickly forges a dozen snowballs. “What? No answer?” He peers around the side of the house to the backyard. “Shaking in your boots, Capsicle?”

“Nope,” Steve says from behind Tony as he smacks him with three more balls.

Tony recovers quickly and races after him only taking two snowballs, but the fact remains, perfectly aimed bullets can take out the opponent. He knows this, and he lets the first one fly. Steve ducks it. The second one flies at him and he raises his arm like he has the shield and it breaks apart harmlessly.

“Some weapons’ manufacturer. I am terrified.” Steve taunts and rushes at him with more snowballs. 

Tony sputters at they glance off of him and he realizes Steve’s going easy on him. “Oh is that how it is? You think you need to be nice to me?” Tony launches forward and shoulders into Steve’s exposed torso, knocking him ass first into the snow and toppling on top of him. “To the victor go the spoils.” Tony raises his arms and then drops down and ravages Steve’s mouth. 

Steve fights back but it is strong and hopeful and hungry; nothing like their staged encounters. The heart rings raw and true. Tony is a mess of want and warmth and understanding. He tears away if only for a moment, to rip his sodden gloves off and to thread his hands through Steve’s hair, to gaze into the challenge of his eyes, to touch and feel. Steve beckons him with a lick of his lips and he plunges back into kissing, and tasting again. 

When he parts from Steve, his breath is lost and stolen. He gulps in air and the world fuzzes out around him. “I want you, God, I love you.”

“Now, yes,” Steve says and shimmies a little under Tony. They are steps from the house, but Steve drags him to his feet under the shelter of a tree. He sheds his coat, and unbuckles his pants. Tony follows suit, he doesn’t care he wants to feel Steve next to him, surrounding him. He wants to show him this is love.

When he frees himself of his pants, he tries to pull Steve close. But Steve stops him, and handles his own cock. “Stay there, just catch it. Okay?”

Confused, Tony stalls and waits, trying to figure out what Steve’s planned. His cock hard and straining in his hand, Steve smears precome down the length and then strokes himself with manic efficiency. It’s hot and Tony’s dick demands attention, but Steve groans out a no and then comes into his own hand. “Here.” He offers Tony the sticky mess, but he understands immediately as Steve turns to face the tree, slightly bent at the waist.

“Please, Tony, now,” Steve says and starts to stroke himself to firmness again. 

With Steve’s come, Tony lubes his sensitive dick and then shuffles close to him, his pants a hindrance. He taps Steve’s entrance and Steve reaches back, yanking at Tony. 

“Please.”

“Are you sure?” He hasn’t prepped him at all.

“Yes, I love you inside me, filling me up. I love being with you, talking to you, touching you. Damn it, get inside of me, fill me up.” 

Slipping the come over his dick, Tony positions himself and says, “Relax, Babe.” 

“All at once, Tony,” Steve says and he’s practically whimpering.

“Okay, Babe, here goes,” He pushes once and then Steve thrusts backward taking him all in at once. The sensation overloads him and he yells out, “Damn it, Jesus Christ, fucking.” He gathers up his willpower, and stops himself from coming on the spot. He starts a slow rhythm to get used to the feel. There’s a particular drag since the come doesn’t lube well. 

Steve clutches onto the tree and runs a continual moan. In between he says, “More, yes, please. Please.”

He wants more than a quick fuck though, he wants to touch Steve, he wants to feel flesh to flesh and he suddenly understands why the chair didn’t help Steve at all. It left him bereft because there was a certain removed clinical feel to it. “Oh Baby, baby,” he says. “I love you.” He runs his hands up underneath Steve’s shirt, feeling his back, and then wrapping his arms around him to hold onto his abdominals. 

Steve moves one hand up as he uses the other hand to brace against the tree. He reaches back, and slides Tony’s hand down to his cock. As Tony grasps him, he hitches and then covers Tony’s hand with his own. Together they begin to stroke, to rock, to find the precipice. 

Tony pushes deep and his mind rolls and churns with it. The sensation, the tightness, the friction encompasses him, transforms, and becomes transfixing. “Baby, baby, I want you, I need you,” he mutters as he jerks more violently. 

“Have me, Tony, you have me,” Steve whispers back and with those words Tony freezes and comes as if everything stops and is paralyzed in the world. He gasps for breath as he comes down from it and stumbles, pulling out much more roughly than he intended. Steve loses his footing and tumbles to the snow covered ground, Tony following him.

They lay in the snow, hot and panting. Tony kisses Steve’s forehead, his eyes, his lips. 

“Tony, please? Tony, can I come?” 

He hadn’t realized it, but he’s still holding onto Steve’s erection, keeping him in hand and pinched tight at the base. He doesn’t even know how he managed it and they both still fell onto the ground together.

Cupping one hand to Steve’s cheek, he says, “Baby, yes, yes.” He begins a long strong, but slow stroke up toward the tip, catching precome as he does, and then follows back down. He repeats and repeats as Steve fixes his gaze on Tony, never parting from it. He continues it, building and teasing as Steve flushes and focuses on Tony. 

“Please, Tony.”

“Watch me, Baby, watch me.” He sinks down and, before he takes the entire length of Steve in his mouth, he says, “All the way, Baby, all the way for you.” He loosens his throat and spreads his lips over the girth. It feels natural and right and Steve arches into him. 

He pays attention to the sensitive flesh, the pulsing blood vessels, the hot slit at the tip until Steve’s a mass of want and grabbing at Tony’s hair until tears come to his eyes. For only a moment, Tony releases him and says, “Come for me, Baby, my heart, my heart, my heart.” And Steve shudders with his release in long ribbons across Tony’s lips and face. He feels a hot warmth spread through him at the thought of being anointed by Steve. 

As Steve collapses back into the snow and Tony falls on top of him, wiping his face on his sleeve as a sense of calm comes over Tony. He hasn’t felt like this in ages and, for a moment, he feels right. In a low whisper Steve says, “I love you, Tony, I do. You believe that right?”

Kissing his jawline, Tony says, “I love you, too.”

Steve remains silent and then, after a pause, adds, “My ass is getting cold.”

“Oh,” Tony says and is yanked back into reality. They are both lying out in the middle of a snow bank with their pants around their ankles. “Oh geez.” He scrambles to his knees as Steve follows him. He looks half-drunk with their post-coital bliss and more than a little wet.

“Let’s get inside, I’m starting to turning into my own version of popsicle,” Tony says and hoists up his pants. “Ew, all wet.”

Steve chuckles but grimaces when he pulls up his own. “That is not comfortable at all.”

“No, no it’s not.” Tony heads toward the door, a hand clasped on Steve trailing behind him. Swinging open the door, Tony feels lighter, happier than he has for ages. He feels like they’ve turned a corner, going with the flow, allowing emotions to overtake them. 

Once inside, he starts to lead them upstairs, but Steve tugs them toward the playroom. Tony hesitates. 

“I just thought it might be nicer to warm up in the bath,” Steve says and there’s a genuine smile on his face. “You fill the tub, I’ll get us something to drink?” 

Tony vacillates; the thought of the playroom and the chair – legitimately gives him the creeps. He feels like a pervert when he shouldn’t, they were both consenting, both willing adult partners.

Steve grasps his hands and says, “It’s all right, Tony. Come on, I want to take a bath and I’d like to do it with you.”

He seems so earnest, so innocent in his request that Tony relents. “Okay, okay, I’ll get the tub filled up.”

Steve beams and disappears around the corner to the kitchen. Settling himself, Tony goes about his task, ignoring the chair and cursing it under his breath. “Sometimes my genius fucks me.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Steve says as he enters the bathroom with a wine bottle, corkscrew, and glasses. 

“Oh, I just-.” Tony can’t explain, how can he without causing the whole of the afternoon to disintegrate like it did yesterday. He waves it off and peeks at the bottle. “White?”

“Is that okay? We’re having cod for dinner,” Steve says and works the corkscrew into place.

“Cod?”

“I found some frozen fish in the freezer, not the best, but I can bread it and bake it, if you like,” Steve says and sets the glasses on the shelf near the bath. He moves to the side and strips down. “My butt is still half frozen.”

Tony lifts an eyebrow and peers at his ass. “Looks perfectly fine to me.” He reconsiders then and asks, “Are you okay? It was a little, hmm, you know, dry?”

Steve steps into the hot water, hissing, and then lays back. “Yes, fine. Luck of the serum. It might hurt a bit, but the serum immediately takes care of any issues. All minor, anyhow.” He stretches his hand out. “Come on get in.”

Tony does and it feels soothing, quiet, and heavenly. Steve hands him the glass and they both relax against the sides of the tub and sip their wine. After some long minutes, Tony chances walking in dangerous territory. “I’m sorry about Fury.”

Steve furrows his brows. “Hmm?”

“Fury, I’m sorry about what happened it him. He could be a bastard, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

Steve swallows compulsively a few times and immediately Tony’s sorry he brought it up. Of course, he shouldn’t have mentioned it, wasn’t Bucky responsible for Fury’s death after all?

“That’s what Rumlow said, right before,” Steve says in a quiet voice. “He said, sorry about what happened to Fury. Messed up what happened to him. Right before they attacked me in the elevator.”

“In the elevator?” Tony hadn’t heard this one.

“Twelve guys? I think it was twelve in an elevator. They had magnetic cuffs.”

“That when you became a fugitive?”

Steve smiles in a crooked, almost cocky way. “Jumped out the window.”

“You nearly killed yourself, didn’t you?” Tony gets to sound like the worried spouse now, he relishes it.

Steve shrugs. “I didn’t.”

“It hurt, didn’t it?”

“I had the shield,” Steve says. “I took down a Quinjet singlehandedly.”

“Don’t get cocky kid.”

“I understood that reference,” Steve says with a wink.

“Oh you did, did you?”

“Hmm, Han Solo, Star Wars, the real first one.”

Tony slaps him lightly. “Damn, you’ve come a long way, Baby.”

Steve colors and places his glass on the shelf. He moves to sit next to Tony. It’s a tight fit, but still nice. “You called me, Baby.”

“Is that a problem? You like Babe.”

He plays with Tony’s hair, light hands working the strands. “It’s different than Baby.”

“You don’t like it, I didn’t mean,” Tony says and he’s grasping, trying not to offend Steve. How can he do this when he feels like he’s walking not on eggshells but razors all the time?

“No, shush, no,” Steve says and nuzzles into his shoulder where the water laps. “I like it, it’s intimate, I just don’t want you to think I have a daddy kink, I don’t.”

“Well, that’s good to know, because I didn’t use it for that-.” Tony says and allows himself to be dragged into a kiss. He feels like, for the first time, that they might be okay, they might be on the right path, if they can stay there, then there are possibilities for them.

“I like it,” Steve says. “Just between us.” His whisper feels like a secret and Tony loves it. The touch, the timbre of his words opens up and reveals to Tony the quake that upset them earlier may be cleared away, forgotten soon. He tries not to think of the ring, tells himself it was too early, he should haven’t sprung it on Steve. They need this time to just be together, just adjust to one another.

He thinks everything might be resolving, might be all right.

Except it isn’t.

Over the next few days Steve suffers horrible nightmares. He wakes up panting and screaming. Even though Tony relents and allows Steve to use the arc reactor nightlight, the images plague him. On one occasion he throws out his arm and smacks Tony right in the jaw and nose so hard he bleeds. Steve comes to himself fairly quickly and hunches over Tony, apologizing and racing to get washcloths. 

Tony waves him off and stumbles to the bathroom with Steve in tow. Steve helps him, gets him to the closed toilet and places a cold washcloth on the bridge of his nose. He looks ragged, frayed, and jittery as he dabs at the blood with tissue, cleaning Tony as best he can in the small space of the bedroom’s bathroom. 

Steve had been so exhausted from the battery of nightmares, even during the day he’d been dragging. Tony suggested an afternoon nap after they gorged, watching all the episodes of Firefly. Before they downloaded the movie to Tony’s tablet that he rigged up to the television with some spookery as Steve called it, Tony noticed Steve listing to the side. The nap would be just the thing to refresh them, both. It wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, I thought they were getting better,” Steve says and continues to clean up the blood.

“No biggie, at least you didn’t call a huge ass armored robot to your side to protect you,” Tony says and blinks his eyes. He thinks he might be a little lightheaded after the punch.

“What?” Steve says and rinses out the washcloth and adds it back to Tony’s nose. “I think you need some ice. Let me go get you some ice.”

“You don’t have to,” Tony says and he words sound thick. His face is throbbing. He needs some ibuprofen. “Some pain killers.”

“I’ll get them and some ice,” Steve says and winces as he peels back the cloth to see the wound. “That is gonna swell if we don’t put some ice on your eye.” He looks miserable.

“Don’t Steve, it happens to the best of us,” Tony says.

“Hold this, I’ll get the ice,” Steve says as he brings Tony’s hand up to keep the cloth over his nose. “Be right back.”

Steve disappears even after Tony calls to him and tells him to not bother. He grabs the lip of the sink and swings up to look in the mirror. “Christ.” Black eye is a given. His nose doesn’t look broken, it feels solid, not mushy or dented. 

As he waits for Steve, he hears someone pull up in the driveway. Crossing into the bedroom and peering down from the small window, he sees it’s a tow truck with the SUV he had JARVIS order. “Shit.”

Rushing downstairs is ridiculous, he’ll never make it there before Steve opens the door. He tries anyhow. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but he halts when Steve answers the bell. 

“Gotta SUV for a Stark?”

“That’d be me,” Tony says from behind Steve. Steve has a clipboard from the service guy in his hands, steps out of the way. Tony snatches up the clipboard, signs off on the vehicle, and waves at the guy to give the keys over to Steve. He throws in a generous tip as the guy keeps staring at his nose and eye and then back at Steve. “Icicles, dangerous, man, watch out.” He gives the clipboard back and accepts the keys from Steve.

The service guy glances over his shoulder a few times as he does the final drop off of the SUV, and then climbs into the tow truck and leaves without any further comment.

“That guy thinks I clocked you one,” Steve says as he closes the door.

“Well, he’s not wrong,” Tony says and tosses the keys to side table.

“Why’d you get a car?”

“It’s an SUV and I needed one. You did see what happened to the last one, right? Or did you get a concussion and I didn’t know about it?” Tony asks and ends up in the kitchen, finds the plastic baggie filled with ice, and wraps it in a towel. He finds the pill bottle on the counter and the glass already prepped with water. He spills out a three pills and downs them with some water.

“Yeah, yeah, I did.” Steve wanders back to the couch, but when Tony joins him he looks wrong. Like angles bent in obtuse directions, he’s out of sorts and uneasy. 

“What is it?” Tony says and clasps Steve’s knee. He’s still in his sweats, bare chested and mussed from sleep.

“I don’t know why you need the car- SUV. I brought a car, not my bike. We could use that,” Steve says and he gets up again.

Tony lays back and places the ice on his face. “I don’t get why the big deal. I like to have transportation. What’s this about?”

Steve doesn’t answer right away and Tony decides it’s best not to press. The rollercoaster they’ve been riding hasn’t let up much in the last few days. The blow to the face hurts like hell but waking up to Steve whimpering and breaking apart in his arms slices him to the quick. 

The few times he asked Steve what the dreams consisted of, Steve only confessed that they were of the war, or seeing Bucky as the Winter Soldier. Or falling. He talks about falling – but Tony doesn’t know if he’s reliving his fall or Bucky’s fall. Trying to remain the supportive significant other as dreams torment Steve wears on Tony. He continues to try and represent a good boyfriend. It isn’t easy.

He hears the snap of popcorn as Steve prepares it and he calls, “Are we doing the movie then?”

“Don’t know,” Steve says. “Just hungry.” 

Tony doesn’t argue; throbbing headache and all, he’s not up for a movie. Entering the living area space, Steve cradles a big bowl of popcorn and a couple of beers. He places one on the table and hands one to Tony. For only a millisecond, Tony reacts, doesn’t want to take it from Steve. Showing patience, Steve only nods and places the beer on the side table near Tony. Steve sits next to Tony, only to place the popcorn bowl on the coffee table and lean over to get a throw. He tucks the blanket around Tony and then proceeds to scoop up the popcorn. He doesn’t eat it, he just stares at the bowl.

He’s willing to lay next to Steve as he watches the movie, rest while Steve enjoys the movie. “I can put it on.”

Steve never answers, and Tony becomes increasingly uncomfortable. He’s not sure how everything derailed. The last few days, while tough for Steve, served them well. Reconnecting might be therapists dream term, but there’s something to be said about hanging out with your loved one, watching old television shows and movies, playing in the snow. It works, or Tony thought it worked especially the ache in his ass from earlier this afternoon when in a fit of complete spontaneity Steve dragged Tony onto his lap and they’d made a sweet love while Firefly played in the background.

“Do you want to watch the movie now?” Tony asks. The razors are back, he’s treading on them and they’re ankle deep.

“No, not really,” Steve says and puts the bowl back on the coffee table. He begins to stand up, but Tony catches his hand.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m gonna go get a shirt,” Steve says almost distractedly like he’s actually planning something else and throws out the excuse without much thought.

“Not until we discuss what’s going on.”

Steve turns and the silence holds fear and rage and hurt. “You were going to leave.”

“What?” Tony says and folds the blanket down. He’s not an old man, for god’s sake – he doesn’t need a damned blanket.

“You got a car delivered, Tony, you were going to leave.”

“If you didn’t notice, I had a SUV, we kind of totaled it and I needed another way to get around.”

Steve glares at him, his mouth set in a thin line. “You had me. I brought a car.”

“So you said, but I needed a way-.”

Steve bends closer and says, “To leave, you were going to leave.”

“Why are you doing this now? It’s just a damned car-.”

“SUV.”

“Oh we’re doing that now?” Tony says. He jumps up so that Steve isn’t doing the hulk thing and crowding him with his mass. “In what world did you think I wouldn’t get a new means of transportation? What world?” Before Steve answers, Tony cuts him off. “Oh you thought we might sally on out of here together, driving off in your little hobo car as the happy little couple?”

“Tony, I-.”

“As I recall you’re the one who wasn’t interested in showing to the world who we are,” Tony says, everything he’s been suppressing bubbles up, and strides over to the ring, where it still sits on the table near the fire. “You’re the one who doesn’t want tomorrow. You’re too busy chasing after yesterday.”

“Tony, don’t. I want to be with you,” Steve says and his hands are open and empty. He looks smaller, less fit, like his muscles have shrunk. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“What for? What are you here for?” Tony says. For the first time, the relief of letting all the anxiety and worry out feels like freedom. “You said we’re just sex and nothing more.”

“Tony, I didn’t mean it, I thought we’d gotten past this,” Steve says and he turns around as if some clues as to what to do might be behind him. He walks a step or two away and then turns back, his face a rage of emotions. “What the hell do you want of me? I’m here with you. I’m not going after him now, while the trail is still hot. I’m here with you. I thought that made it clear.”

“Clear to whom? I don’t know anymore,” Tony says. “You’re having nightmares, all the time Steve. You call out in your sleep, do you know that? I bet you didn’t know that,” Tony says and he hates admitting it. He kept that secret safe and buried over the last few days. “You don’t call for me, you call for him. Do you know that? Do you?”

Steve shakes his head, his eyes searching, scanning, but not seeing the room as if he’s trying to reboot his memories, recall the harm that has already been done during the haunting of his dreams. “I just- it isn’t what you think?”

“What do I think? That you love him? You as much said you did the other day,” Tony says, the ring clasped tight in his hand.

“He’s my friend, Tony,” Steve says and his voice cracks as he speaks. “He’s all that I-.”

Tony launches himself at Steve, only stopping inches from him as Steve puts his hands up to shield himself. “No, no, he’s not all that you have. I’m right here, I am right fucking here.”

In a bellow, Steve screams back. “He’s all that I have left of my life from before, he’s it. Can’t you see that? Can’t you know how important he is to me?”

“Do you want him?” Tony counters. “Do you want to be with him?”

“Don’t ask me that,” Steve says and swallows hard and he caves inward like there are holes in his heart and soul and there’s nothing to keep him upright anymore, no foundation. “I love you, I love you. Why can’t you see that? I can’t just leave him. I’m all he has. He needs me.”

“Then tell me, what am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to react? I got a god damned car because you cannot commit to me,” Tony says and he’s panting hard and his lungs burn like he’s been on a five mile sprint.

“I want you to know that I love you. You believe that, right?”

“Then don’t,” Tony says and he knows, knows deep inside that he’s asking the impossible. “Then don’t go after him. Don’t look for him.”

“I’m not, I’m here with you,” Steve says and the looks in his eyes sears a path through Tony because it is blinding and it is love and it is hurt and fear and loss.

“Now,” Tony says. “But what about when we leave?” He lowers his voice. “What about then?”

“Don’t, Tony, please,” Steve says, breaking.

Tony remembers pleads from Steve when they meant something different, when it was exciting and new. “Don’t go after him Steve. Don’t.”

“I can’t make that promise to you, Tony.”

He lifts his chin and then nods. “Okay, okay.” He steps around the coffee table, dragging the blanket with him.

“Where are you going?” Steve says and makes as if to follow him.

Tony heads to the staircase. “I just need a few minutes. Just a few minutes.” He climbs the stairs, half expecting Steve to follow, but he doesn’t and it hurts all the more.

He spends the rest of the evening in the bedroom on the bed curled under the blanket that Steve had given him. The light from the arc reactor illuminating the ceiling with tiny triangles of blue and red and gold. He considers calling Pepper or Bruce or even Rhodey, but he feels the fool and hates that his drama leaks over into their lives. It’s time to find his own way, clean up his own mess. He has to tough it out, and get through the storm. Isn’t that what they say, the only way to get over the storm is through it.

Around midnight, he finally crawls out of bed and picks up his phone. He goes into the bathroom, turns on the water, and presses in the contact number.

He’s surprised the call is answered on the second ring.

“Wilson?”

“Yeah, you need to get here,” Tony says and scrubs a hand through his hair.

“What? Something happen to Steve?” Sam replies.

“You need to get here and help him. He’s not in a good way. Bad dreams, bad choices.”

“He’s a prime candidate for PTSD, you know that right? After everything that’s happened,” Sam says.

“Yeah, I do, but you need to get here. Now, like tomorrow morning. I’ll have a private jet ready for you at Dulles as soon as you’re ready,” Tony says and squeezes his eyes closed.

“What’s going on, is he trying to hurt himself?” Sam says.

“No, not that I know of,” Tony says. He takes in a deep breath, and releases it.

“Are you trying to hurt yourself?”

Tony laughs, it is low and brusque. The irony doesn’t escape him. “No, not how you mean anyhow.”

There’s a pause on the other line and then Sam proves to Tony why Steve trusted him. “What can I do for you, man?”

“I just need you to get here, take the flight, and get here.” He cups a hand over his eyes. He doesn’t want to see the world anymore. “Get here, because he’ll need you. I’m leaving him in the morning.”


	9. Chapter 9

Placing the ring on the night side table, Tony leaves it to pack. He tries to forget the rest of the phone call with Sam, because if he doesn’t, he’ll lose his nerve. It’s taken him too long to learn to take care of himself, not to lean on others, not to expect others to come in when he’s shattered to glue the pieces back together again. He cannot stay here and fix Steve at his own expense. That’s not what love is all about. 

Before Hydra, before the Winter Soldier, even before the threat of the Registration legislation, they’d had a chance. They were both whole, maybe frazzled and frayed on the edges, but now, things are different. Steve needs to discover what he wants, Tony can’t force him to choose. He needs to decide who and what he wants to be.

Tony puts away the memories, the first long ride in the car to the house by Lake Chautauqua. He packs away the thoughts and images of Steve eating Cheetos and drinking chocolate milk. He parcels up the images of Steve in fine clothes, playing craps and winning every hand when they danced through Vegas. He closes the doors on his recollections of buying restaurants and making love, and learning a whole new lifestyle just for Steve, so he could give Steve what he sought. He wonders if he’ll ever be in love the same way again. 

Loving Steve had been encompassing, thrilling, and somehow calming. Even through their play, he found a certain peace as his mind centered on taking care of Steve, attending to his needs, loving the way his body responded to Tony and ached for Tony. 

Folding his clothes, he puts them in the suitcase, and whispers, “Maybe someday.” But he knows he’s lying. What he’s about to do, is unforgivable. He shouldn’t leave Steve in the state he’s in, but Tony knows, comprehends that he’s incapable of repairing the damage that Hydra’s done to Steve. After talking with Sam, he recognizes that Steve’s reactions and actions are derived from one thing, one central tenet; the loss of truth. 

From the get go, when Steve walked through the door and they began again, Tony had it wrong. Steve didn’t need to tread old territory, he needed to forge new paths. Trying to fit back into their roles immediately had been like asking a man to don a coat from his childhood – as Jefferson would have said. It is impossible to go back, it is only possible to move forward. 

Steve cannot move forward; he cannot accept Tony’s marriage proposal because the past consumes him. He needs to accept the damage the past and the loss of everything in his life – including the loss of his belief system – has done to him. Tony cannot be certain Steve can do it. 

He only knows he cannot help Steve. “What the hell kind of boyfriend am I?” Tony says and clicks the suitcase closed. The best thing Tony can do is to leave, before he ruins everything, before the memory of their love turns sour and ugly. 

By the time he descends the staircase it is almost dawn where shadows and light intertwine. He sets his suitcase near the door and glimpses Steve curled up on the couch. The popcorn remains untouched on the table. He wonders what Steve did all night, did he only go to sleep? Did he think about coming up to see Tony? 

“I abandoned you, didn’t I?” Tony says and scratches at the welt on his face. It aches and he supposes he deserves it, somehow in the cosmic balance of things. 

Steve doesn’t answer, he’s deeply asleep. His hands clutched in balls, he tucks them under his chin. It’s good that he can sleep, that he can sleep undisturbed considering the nightmares that assaulted him over the last few days. Tony reaches for the small blanket, and throws it over him, being careful not to wake him. 

He peers over his shoulder at Steve to ensure he hasn’t moved before he enters the playroom. He has a few tasks he must attend. He picks up the instruments, the sex toys, the whips and chains, the clamps and weights, and rings. He tidies up, putting everything away in the base of the chair and locks it with a biosecure lock. He opens the control panel at the foot of the chair and keys it so that no one can activate it. If anyone tries the circuits will fry and the solid state disk will explode. To anyone outside of Steve and Tony, the chair will look only like a high tech lounge or chaise. 

“One more thing,” Tony says and crosses over to the closet. Opening the door, he frowns. What was he thinking? He shakes his head and drags out the small case that’s on wheels. He flips it open and then goes to retrieve the last piece of incriminating evidence.

“What are you doing?”

Tony whips around to find Steve standing at the entrance to the playroom. His eyes are bleary and look red rimmed as if he’d been crying. Tony almost breaks, almost.

“I’m putting some stuff away.”

Steve steps into the room and looks at the empty table, the chair and then to Tony. “What is that?” He points at the bodysuit in Tony’s grasp.

Tony shutters; he wants to hide it. “I just – nothing.”

Closing the distance between them, Tony notices Steve has something grasped in his one hand and he’s reaching to touch the material of the suit. “That’s – that’s like the chair. Isn’t it?”

Scowling, Tony dumps it into the case sitting on the floor of the closet. “Yeah, something like that.”

“What’s it for?” Steve says and his eyes glimmer with excitement. “Are you thinking we could-.”

“What? Are you asking me if we could use it?” Tony shakes his head. “Christ, Steve, you accused me of wanting to leave.”

“I know, and you can’t deny that you’d thought about it, either,” Steve says and bends as if to touch the bodysuit. Tony steps in front of him.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tony says. 

“What? Why not?” Steve straightens and there’s a challenge to his expression, to the set of his jaw, the fierceness in his eyes.

“You noticed, you can see for yourself,” Tony says and feels like he’s a coward. He cannot say it, he cannot admit that he’s leaving Steve, abandoning him. 

“Tony, I’m not sure what’s going on here. We had a fight. Arguments are normal for couples.”

“Arguments like you watch too much football, or why can’t you do the dishes once in a while are normal arguments,” Tony says and he cringes. The word normal – why is that so important to him? “We are fighting over the fact your long dead friend is back, hunted you, tried to kill you, and you still want to be with him.”

“I never said-.”

“You didn’t deny it either,” Tony says and slams the case closed on the bodysuit – a bodysuit designed to work with the intelligent metal of the chair, a suit so light and thin it conforms to Tony’s body, a suit to integrate with the chair’s sensors so that the participants can feel each other’s stimuli. A work of beauty and it will never be used. 

“That’s because you get too upset every time we talk about it,” Steve says and moves away from Tony before he spins on his heel. “Yes, you want to hear it? You want to hear it?” His eyes, his whole body is on fire with anger. “Yes, I loved him – I did – back in the day. All we had – in the war – was each other. When you lying in the pit, in the dead of night and you have no idea if they’re out there, if you can sleep, if it’s your last damned night on Earth, you cling, you hold on, you become more than a band of brothers.

“Yes, I loved Bucky. But I already told you that, long before we started.”

“That’s fine, but he’s back now,” Tony says and he hates the way he sounds so light, so tender, so small.

“Yes, he is,” Steve says and he looks all the more like Captain America, even in his sweats without a shirt. “I need to find him. Whether you or anyone else understands this is beside the point. Bucky is all that I have left of who I was. He remembers the same things that I do, we share the same life experiences-.”

“And that is why I don’t want you chasing after him,” Tony says and he knows he’s desperate, but the point for truth is lying out there, screaming for him to explain. “If you find him, and you will, what happens then to us? Whatever you say, how can you possibly tell me we’ll be okay? How can you? You can’t and you won’t, because Captain America won’t lie, not about the important things. You can’t tell me that you won’t abandon everything we have to go off and be with him.”

“Tony, I can’t help you with your insecurities.”

“And I can’t help you with your addiction, anymore,” Tony lashes out and locks the case to stand up. When he looks, Steve is standing there, wide eyed and frozen. 

“Wh-what?”

“That’s right,” Tony says and he edges toward Steve yet the good Captain, backs away. “That is what this is for you.” He gestures to the playroom. “You want this, you crave it, you want to hide in subspace because then you can’t feel what the hell happened to you. You’re running back to him so you can hide from yourself, hide from reality. However well Captain America has adjusted to the 21st century is a moot point, because Steve Rogers hasn’t. Steve Rogers uses his love for subspace to get drunk on it and hide from the fucking world. I’m not here to enable you.”

Steve opens his mouth as if he might retort, but he closes it and looks away. His one hand, the one he’s holding something in, fists until his knuckles are white. 

“This is not an excuse, an escape,” Tony says and he’s softer yet more strident in his statements. “For me, this was a way to connect with you, to touch you and hold you, to be with you on the most physical of levels. To know you handed over everything to me, it thrilled me, but I was honored too. It was something to cherish and love and protect.”

Steve picks that moment to interject. “Was?”

Tony closes his eyes and the hot prickle of tears threaten. He swallows and looks at Steve. “I’m sorry Steve – I can’t be your crutch.”

“Don’t do this, Tony,” Steve says and he opens his hand. The anklet, once torn with beads lost over the floor has been tied back together with the beads threaded back on it. “I want to be with you.”

“But for how long?” Tony says and turns to leave. He picks up the case and sets it by his suitcase. Steve follows him out the playroom

“You’re leaving? You’re really going?” Steve says and clutches the anklet again. “Don’t do this to us, Tony. I want to be with you.”

“No. I don’t think you do. I think you need to find out what you want from this life of yours-.”

“You used it as a crutch too,” Steve says and even to Tony’s ears it sounds like a last ditch effort to save their failing romance or whatever the hell it can be classified.

“I know that, I understand that, but part of coming here was to reconnect with you on a personal level, to be with you. To feel you and touch you and know that we would be together,” Tony says and stops before he adds ‘forever’. 

“Still,” Steve says as he turns back and indicates the playroom.

“God damn it, we’re adults, as sane, consensual adults we can do that and not use it as a crutch. Don’t you get it?” Tony says. “That should be for fun, even with the damned fourth bead, it should be for fun. Sure it can define us, be part of us, but in the end, we should know it isn’t the basis for everything.”

“Don’t go,” Steve says.

“I can’t stay, not when you don’t know what you want, Steve. I can’t be your crutch, shit, I can’t be anyone’s crutch. I’m too fucked up myself,” Tony says. “I understand addiction and wanting to hide. You have to find yourself, before you go rushing after him. You have to decide what’s best for you.”

“And if I decide it’s you?”

Tony can’t answer that, because he doubts that will be Steve’s conclusion. In the end he won’t win, he can’t – this is his life after all. 

“Here,” Steve says and cups Tony’s hand in his and then deposits the anklet. “Take it, when you’re ready, maybe, just maybe you’ll come back.”

Tony grasps it in his hands, feeling the smooth touch of the beads. “I don’t think you’ll want me to come back, Steve. Can you tell me you won’t want to be with Bucky?”

Steve lifts a corner of his mouth. “I never planned on being with Bucky long term, I wanted to marry Peggy.”

“But you couldn’t be with Bucky, back then,” Tony says and shakes the growing want to scoop this man into his arms. “Now, now you can.”

“Yes,” Steve says but adds no more to that and it hurts hard and fast and true.

“Do me a favor, if you find him, when you find him, please realize that he’s had a shitload of life experiences that are completely different than your own. He’s not the same person anymore, and never will be,” Tony says and stuffs the anklet in his pocket. He grabs his hoodie and zips it on. When he turns back to Steve, there’s a devastation streaking through his expression. “But what’s even more important is this – your life experiences are completely different now. Completely. You’ve changed and grown and turned into a man in the 21st century. If you’ll accept the 21st century, embrace it, instead of rushing back to your past, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll understand. You’ll get it.” 

Tony picks up his bags intending to place them in the new SUV out in the driveway. He won’t leave until Sam gets to the cottage. Checking the time, he notes the flight should have arrived awhile ago. It will take about an hour or so from the airport depending on the roads. 

Steve knocks Tony gently away and picks up his bags. “Let me.” His voice cracks. Tony allows him to carry the bags to the vehicle. He tucks them in and then they both return to the house.

They go back to the house and Steve wanders into the kitchen. “I’ll pack up and leave as soon as possible,” Steve says and doesn’t look at Tony.

“You can stay as long as you want.” It feels empty, the offer. 

Steve busies himself making tea, he sets a cup on the table for Tony and then leans back against the kitchen counter to drink his own. In the end, he only holds it and stares absently into space. After a long, impossibly awkward silence, he says, “I love you, Tony.”

“I love you, too.”

“Don’t leave me,” Steve asks, his expression earnest and open, even hopeful.

“I have to do this, for both of us. We’re broken the way we are.”

“We can fix it,” Steve says and the glimmer in his eyes turns to quiet tears. 

Tony can’t look, he is a coward, he’s not a hero, he’s not brave. “I love you, but we can’t fix this, until you fix yourself.”

“Tony.” It is a plea.

“Please, don’t,” Tony says. “Because I can’t deny you, and that’s part of the problem. When you first came, all I wanted to do was make love to you and be close to you. But I didn’t because I ended up doing what you wanted. I can’t deny you, but I have to, right now, right here.” He knows the words to use, the words that have power with Steve. “Be a good man, Steve, and don’t ask me.”

Steve puts the mug down and nods his head several times, keeping his eyes averted from meeting Tony’s gaze. 

“I’m not leaving you alone, I called Sam, he’s coming.” Tony crosses the space and lays a hand on Steve’s arm. He’s surprised when Steve doesn’t pull away. “It’s better this way, we’ll tear one another apart right now. You have to believe it.”

“You’re belief system is quite different than mine, Tony.”

“And that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Tony says. “We don’t share that, we’re cut from different molds in some ways.”

“But in other ways?” It is both a challenge and a plea.

“Other ways, we’re closer, I think,” Tony says and wishes to all the angels and gods and demons and whatever the hell else that Pepper or someone who knew this shit better than him could come and talk for him. “It’s time.” He hears the crunch of tires on snow outside.

“Yes,” Steve says and inhales as if to prepare himself for battle. 

Tony clasps the back of Steve’s neck and draws him close. “I love you. Remember that, okay.” He kisses him firmly, tightly, perfectly, but doesn’t offer a promise of tomorrow because he can’t. He honestly doesn’t know what tomorrow might bring. He’s setting Steve on his own, to figure out his mucked up brain, and Tony can’t hope or promise that they’ll have something afterward. It doesn’t work like that.

There’s a rap on the door.

“Coming,” Tony says and drifts away from Steve.

“Tony,” Steve says and then presses his lips together. “Okay, okay.” He states it as if to convince himself. “Il est temps de dire au revoir.”

“Yes,” Tony says and opens the door. 

 

THE END

 

_* Il est temps de dire au revoir = It is time to say goodbye._

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](http://winterstar95.tumblr.com) This series will continue:
> 
> The next major story in the series will be called _Standard Operating Procedures_ but immediately following The Lost Protocol there will be a timestamp from Steve's POV.
> 
> There's a reason I titled this series "This is battle; this is war". ;)


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